Alex and Bobby bask in the idea of a book on “business and baseball” from Alex Rodriguez, then discuss Manny Machado’s contract extension and Peter Seidler’s perspective on on risk vs. reward, the A’s going door-to-door looking for stadium money in Las Vegas, Bob Nutting’s CBA hopes and dreams, Tony Clark shutting down the prospect of a salary cap, and Rays reliever Ryan Thompson’s tweet thread on his arbitration experience, before answering listener questions about pitch clock leeway and spring training cliches.
Links:
Peter Seidler on why he’s comfortable taking risks
Bob Nutting is mad about the CBA
Ryan Thompson’s tweet thread
Marc Normandin on the necessary evil of arbitration
Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon
Tipping Pitches merchandise
Songs featured in this episode:
The Clash — “Should I Stay or Should I Go” • 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, I’m looking at a picture that could, it could honestly change our future. I think you probably know what this picture is. I think many of the listeners have probably seen this picture as well. But for those of you who have not, I’m going to describe this picture in great detail. It is a screenshot of an Instagram story. That Instagram story is from the account, arod with a checkmark. It is a photo of A. Rod’s legs, propping up what appears to be some A-Rod Corp, 7×11 stationary, the A-Rod Corp logo in the top right corner, and handwritten at the top of that stationery is just the word “Book”, underlined. Nothing else on the stationary, “Book”, underlined, top of the page “Book”, underlined. Caption, Instagram story caption, ‘Decided to start writing my book on lessons learned in business & baseball”. Lessons learned, business & baseball, business first, and baseball second. I mean, this could literally change our lives. This guy changed the course of our futures, if he keeps writing that book. And he publishes that book, and we read that book. And you know what? We get him on this podcast–
ALEX: Yep.
BOBBY: –to talk about–
ALEX: Yup.
BOBBY: –that book. Because then it’s a nonzero chance. You know, like, we are one of the 50 most popular baseball podcasts in the world, objectively speaking. That is somehow now true, six years later. So like he’s got to get around, he’s got to make the rounds.
ALEX: He’s gonna do the media tour.
BOBBY: Exactly. You know, he’s going to do the media tour. He’s, he’s that is his specialty. Maybe he doesn’t need the Tipping Pitches audience as much as we need him. But who knows? Maybe he feel like he does.
ALEX: I think he just doesn’t, I think he just doesn’t know how much he needs the Tipping Pitches audience. And you know what? I can’t even roast him for just starting with the word “Book”, ‘cuz, boy, have I started many story or paper for school, or even say a Tipping Pitches newsletter, with, with just the, the title, the title–
BOBBY: Yup.
ALEX: –of the project up top. You got to start somewhere, you have to start somewhere. My question is, is he gonna hand write the whole book?
BOBBY: I as someone who has recently handwritten a lot of things for the first time in years, the Tipping Pitches newsletter or the Tipping Pitches holiday cards. Which many of you will be receiving either at time of listening or within the next couple of days, If you live internationally, perhaps. Did you know that you have to buy global stamps, if you want to send a letter internationally? It’s just a regular stamp, but bigger, and not square and rectangular. I don’t really remember, I just like stamped all of these as fast as possible.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Ahoved them in my mailbox. Funny story, can I tell you a detour?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: About the Tipping Pitches holiday card. So I finished writing them. I finished addressing them. I finished stamping them. And I was holding them in a big sack. You know, it’s like it’s like 100 holiday cards. You know, it’s a lot of holiday cards.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: A hefty amount, and I was heading out to dinner. And I thought I would stop by the, you know, post office drop off box, on my way to the subway. And something that never happens. I was standing waiting for the elevator in my building. For like a long time, it was like completing a trip down and then back up. And someone from our floor was also waiting with us. So I’m just holding all of these, all of these letters. And the person is like, what are those for? And I’m like, you know, like the, they kind of insinuated because I was standing there with my partner, they kind of insinuated, like, are these wedding invites? You know, and I had to just be like, nah.
ALEX: Right. It’s kind of funny story, actually.
BOBBY: How do I explain this? I’m just the classic, prototypical white guy in Brooklyn with a podcast and it has a Patreon and they were like, oh, cool.
ALEX: Right, I’m, like, how deep, how deep into it did you go? You were like, so there are three tiers, those who sign up for the- are you familiar with Alex Rodriguez, the baseball player? So he’s a really important part of the soul of our, of our podcast going back. But really–
BOBBY: But ironically, ironically.
ALEX: Right. Well, that might be ironic for you.
BOBBY: That’s the man who’s trying to become his protege.
ALEX: Right, yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, back to A-Rod, enough about me being awkward in the elevator bay, back to A-Rod. Do you think he would come on? Honestly speaking, if you had to bet your life, could we get A-Rod on the podcast? Or rather if your life depended on it? Like, if we don’t get A-Rod you die.
ALEX: That’s–
BOBBY: Can you do it?
ALEX: gonna, that is kind of where I’m at right now, right? Uhm, I don’t know that, like, I think we could. But under certain circumstances, I think we could pay him to come on, right? Because–
BOBBY: Ohh!
ALEX: –on his website–
BOBBY: No!
ALEX: –there’s like, there’s a speaking engagements form you can fill out so like if we really needed to.
BOBBY: It could be like Hillary Rodham Clinton talking to Goldman Sachs.
ALEX: That’s right. Yeah. I might compromise our morals, a little bit.
BOBBY: Do you- okay, we can put up a poll. Would the listeners be okay with us paying A-Rod?
ALEX: Because I’d rather, I’d rather not be beholden to that, right? I want to have an honest, frank conversation. I don’t want to be accused of–
BOBBY: Propagandizing?
ALEX: –pro- right, exactly. Paying our sources. Getting to some sketchy territory there. But I think that this book does open up the, the largest opportunity for us to potentially get him to come on and talk about it. Like there’s a nonzero chance, I think. I think it’s more likely that we get say, Alex Rodriguez, than Rob Manfred.
BOBBY: Oh, easily, easily.
ALEX: Easily. Yeah.
BOBBY: There’s nothing to be gained from Rob Manfred coming on this podcast. There’s only him embarrassing himself to the point where like the owners like should we have this guy as the Commissioner?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But A-Rod I mean, it honestly feels, it feels like punching down to ask us to pay money to have A-Rod on the pod. Like you’re a billionaire–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –bro. Maybe not actually.
ALEX: Well–
BOBBY: You’re like on your way to becoming a billionaire. You’re several 100 millionaire, according–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –to yourself, and I imagine according to this book that you’re writing with business lessons. I mean, suffice to say, should this book ever get written and that’s a gigantic if, at this point. We will be discussing it in great, great detail. Either with–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –the man himself or we’ll do the sort of like ride around with him to talk her out of A-Rod.
ALEX: Yeah, it might be reason enough for us to finally launch the Tipping Pitches Book Club. Which, which an idea that’s been I think bandied around before but–
BOBBY: When was supposed to kind of be part of this year episode that–
ALEX: Well–
BOBBY: –you’re listening to right now with Evan Drellich in his book, Winning Fixes Everything. But at time of recording, it kind of seems like Evan might not be able to come on the pod this week. So you guys know about as much as I do on that front. Turns out when you’re an important baseball reporter, sometimes they ask you to fly places and report things and your scheduled time to talk to the two guys from the Tipping Pitches podcast, sometimes gets interrupted. So, I don’t know, you reading the episode description. You tell me if Evan Drellich is gonna be on this pod, I don’t know!
ALEX: I gotta say, if, if he blew us off, to go write a story about like, the bigger bases, I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be a little mad. I’m gonna be a little bit mad.
BOBBY: Well, fortunately, I think that we can confirm that the thing that he blew us off for was to go report on minor league unionization bargaining. Which, you know, yeah, fine. If there’s one thing that you’re going to use as an excuse to pull off the Tipping Pitches podcast, you’ve kind of found the one thing.
ALEX: Exactly.
BOBBY: Evan is a good person whom we like, and we enjoyed talking to you last time. We will eventually, even if it is years from now, talking to him about Winning Fixes Everything. But as I said, at time of recording, I don’t know if that’s gonna be in this episode or not. What will be in this episode is a bit of a grab bag of news from the last week. On a related news, some baseball related news? I don’t know if you remember what that’s like.
ALEX: No, I, I watched, I had it on my TV the other day, and just like–
BOBBY: Like the part where they like get on the field and like one team is on one side. And the other team is like batting and–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –where the ball [8:52]–
ALEX: And they’re all wearing really cute uniform and–
BOBBY: Yeah. That’s interesting that we have to remember how to talk about that. And then we’ll do a couple listener questions at the end if we have time for them. But before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I am Alex Bazeley.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[9:09]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: Okay, thank you to new patron, Megan, this week. Thank you, Megan. I love when there’s like one patron who signs up. It just feels so personal, you know. Thanks, Megan.
ALEX: Yeah. Yeah.
BOBBY: No one else to thank this week except you, you did it!
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Appreciate your support.
ALEX: This episode is sponsored by Megan from the Patreon.
BOBBY: Literally. The, the sole sponsor, the presenting sponsor of this week’s episode of Tipping Pitches is you Megan. Thank you, Megan. Let’s do it! Let’s do it, let’s do–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –our little grab bag of news–
ALEX: Where do you want to start?.
BOBBY: –before- well, here’s where I want to start. I want to tell the Tipping Pitches listeners what they can expect in the month of March from the Tipping Pitches podcast. Does that sound good to you?
ALEX: That sounds grea- I’m curious to hear what we’re doing in the month, month of March too, so this is perfect.
BOBBY: Well, this is the only time I ever get to talk to you nowadays, you’re so, you’re so busy becoming A-Rod’s protege that on mic is the only way for me to plan with you, so here we go. On March 6, I’m just gonna read straight from the, straight from the planning doc, TBD for the first half, and then we’re going to talk about the Tipping Pitches Patreon annual survey results for the second half. That is a survey that we released almost like the GM survey of all of the Tipping Pitches patrons from theSlack to answer various questions. We’re going to talk about that and how it relates to how we’ve been consuming baseball for the last year and we’ll be consuming baseball for the next year. That is on March 6. March 13, special secret new fun idea, which I hope can be another annual podcast that we do. March 28, the Tipping Pitches 2023 Banned Topics. March 27, the Tipping Pitches 2023 All GIF Draft. And then on April 3, baseball is back.
ALEX: Baseball is fucking back, baby!
BOBBY: So I mentioned we’ll be talking about how like 13 players on the Mets are already on the injured list.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: How the A’s are already out of contention for the AL West.
ALEX: I saw them win their first and last game of the year yesterday.
BOBBY: Who, the Mets?
ALEX: The, no the A’s.
BOBBY: What do you mean the first and last game of the year?
ALEX: Well, they, they, they won yesterday.
BOBBY: Oh, oh, oh, so this is what that was their first and only win for the 2023 season?
ALEX: I, I don’t have high hopes at the moment, I’ll say that.
BOBBY: Okay, okay.
ALEX: I, I will, I will also add that I would appreciate if they, if their Spring Training jerseys had player names on the back of them. Because I don’t know whose playing for the A’s at the moment.
BOBBY: That just feels like a public service announcement for any Spring Training team. Like it’s not just as much as I know the baby’s on the New York Mets. I don’t expect every fan to know the baby’s on their own team. Helps me get Brett Baty, you know, knocking to run bombs. Third baseman of the future, let’s go!
ALEX: Literal baby, literal child.
BOBBY: You know who’s not the third baseman of the future for the New York Mets? Who for years and years and years that kind of like, you know, lit prayer, circle candles, hoping that he might be, that’s Manny Machado. Who’s gonna finish his career in San Diego, most likely.
ALEX: That’s right. Good for him.
BOBBY: 11-year, $350 million extension, that is on top of the $150 million that he has already made playing for the San Diego Padres. Manny Machado, good baseball player, good [12:31].
ALEX: The kind of player you, you back a jump truck of money up to and say here you go. Which is exactly what the Padres said.
BOBBY: Is this big news to you? Like once upon a time we spent months talking about where Manny Machado and Bryce Harper would end up signing. And now those, those guys are just kind of like there for the rest of their careers. I, I guess to me, it’s big news in the sense that whatever is happening in San Diego must be for the long haul, if they’re just handing out 11-year contracts to Bogaerts, and Machado, and Tatis, and, like they clearly think that what they’re building is sustainable.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Despite what the rest of the industry feels, despite what a lot of media fields right, what a lot of weirdo fans feel. What they’re doing is sustainable. And so for our purposes, I feel like getting all of your stars to agree to long term deals is like a pretty notable trend for a team that has completely reversed their fortunes in the last five years.
ALEX: It’s certainly big news for us. Because it’s a testament to the fact that you can turn your fortunes around like you mentioned. Kind of just by deciding you would like to turn your fortunes around. And I think the, the kind of narrative around it has been really instructive as well. Like, I’m glad we’re talking about the Padres. I’m glad that owners are coming out and saying this is unsustainable, like whatever, like good, let’s air the dirty laundry. And, and I’m glad frankly that Peter Seidler is also not backing down, right? Because this is his opportunity to really stake his claim and say, we’re in this for the long haul, right? And, and that is really important to fans. And he’s answered questions, as many owners have done this Spring Training. And there was one that really was one of his answers that really sort of stood out to me. Because he was asked about the sort of the risks around spending all this money giving out these extensions. And he responded when we talk about risk, there’s a risk to doing nothing. And we’ve chosen to really focus on the players and what spawned out of that is this amazing relationship between our players and fans. And I just really appreciated that framing, because he’s right that there’s a huge risk to spinning your wheels for years and years and years on end. Not really knowing the damage you’re doing to the relationship with your fans. And we’ve seen this with a guy like Bob Nutting, who right on cue is, is crying poor, right? I think we, we often talk about these, these things like payroll and extensions, in terms of well, the more you spend, the more risk there is, right? The more years you’re locking in, the more risk there is that the player might fall off a cliff. But there’s, there’s a huge risk to not being competitive, right? It may not be reflected in your bottom line at the end of the year, right? We know that, that actually being competitive does not mean so much when it comes to bringing in profits. But there’s a lot of intangibles that you do really risk when you sort of wave the white flag to your fans. And I really appreciate either coming out and saying that and saying that’s not going to be us.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: No matter, no matter what sustainability looks like, we can’t, we can’t do this for, for the long term.
BOBBY: You know, what’s interesting to me about what the Padres are doing is that it’s kind of a rejection of Rob Manfred and One Baseball. You know, they’re kind of like, what they’re doing is committing to spending big money on payroll, so that they can get fans to come to the ballpark and make that their main business. Which feels like so stupid to say because that is what baseball’s main business was for like a 95 years, you know? Until regional sports networks came into play. And so national cable deals came into play, until the advent of television and streaming and everything that is completely reoriented what Major League Baseball’s main profit source is. So, on one hand while we have a guy like Rob Manfred going out in front of any microphone in the Tri-State Area, trying to talk about how he’s trying to centralize baseball’s revenue. What Peter Seidler and the Padres are doing are like, okay, you guys might be wanting to centralize your revenue over there. But we think that it’s still pretty damn valuable to get people to come to the ballpark every day. And when you don’t do that, then you start to get yourself into John Fisher territory, you start to get yourself into Oakland A’s territory, Bob Nutting territory. Now, it’s different because like, the A’s and, and Oakland sports specifically. Like those have been really, Oakland sports have been drained a lot in like the last decade or so. Just by, you know, pure, pure happenstance of the way that these like stadium deals have expired. And it seems like a lot of teams want to leave that area. The Warriors have gone across the bay to San Francisco, the Raiders have gone all the way to Las Vegas, as the A’s have threatened to do. But I mean, you have to remember San Diego like the Chargers left San Diego too. And so the, the Padres are really kind of like the last major four sports team left in town. And it feels like an underrated part of what the Padres are doing and what Seidler is doing and his ownership tenure is saying, like, well, we’ve seen what’s kind of happened when you give up on the fence. And it, we don’t want that to happen to us. And we don’t want the Padres to leave, and we don’t want them, you know, we don’t want to ignore the part of baseball that isn’t just streaming it on television and maximizing its revenue that way. Something, I mean, I know we’ve joked about how we’re not sure if we’re gonna have Evan on this pod or not. But something in Winning Fixes Everything, ironically, was he there’s a section in it about when Jim Crane took over the Astros, about the back of the napkin math that Crane did on revenue for fans coming to games. And like in his mind, and obviously, we can’t apply this directly to every single baseball team because tickets cost different things. Concessions cost different things. Different teams own different parts of their stadium experience and so they might not get the same revenue that the Astros would get. But if we just generally ballpark it, Crane said that, or Evan, Evan reported that could the way that Crane thought about it was that, every fan that comes to the stadium, so every ticket sold I guess it’s not necessarily a fan that comes to the stadium, but give or take some, is worth about $40. And if you pull 2 million fans a year, we’re just doing basic arithmetic here that’s $80 million. That is nothing to scoff at. That is like two that is, that is Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis being on your team. And so if you can continue to pull that it’s paying for itself. And I just, I really love, you know, like far be it for me to hand out like plaudits to A.J. Preller or Peter Seidler themselves for doing things that seem incredibly obvious. But I kind of really love like what the Padres have done with transforming their in person experience. It’s, it’s kind of like bedlam there, and they sell out a lot of games.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: In a city where, in a city where like, you know, San Diego is a, a beautiful city. A city that people who live there really love, definitely attracts like a certain type of idealistic Southern California like a beach-oriented person. And is like a really cool place to live with really super cool in unique, vibrant neighborhoods. But I would not say is like, on the level of LA or New York in terms of how it’s thought of for entertainment. And they basically just like rebuilt their approach to selling out every night and being a main attraction for people in that city. In a way that clearly the Chargers ran away from, and clearly, like a team, like the A’s are trying to run away from an Oakland. And I think a lot of teams that are in medium-sized markets could look at that as a blueprint. I don’t think a lot will but I think a lot could if they were willing.
ALEX: Right, they, especially the ones that you like you mentioned, have a sort of void for live sports. I think, I think Seidler realizes that there’s a ton of value actually in having that sort of chokehold per se, on sports fandom in your city, right? It’s not nothing to see a bunch of kids walking around with Tatis and, and Machado jerseys, right? And they’re also doing the marketing for you, right, for your team. I mean, and, and like you say the experience, the fan experience is electric there, right? So you’re not even just going to watch Manny Machado, you’re going to sit there and roar with 40,000 chaotic fans and have a fucking blast.
BOBBY: Right. And be in the beautiful weather and eat the-
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –great food at the park. And like, walk around the outfield and see why it’s unique and see why it’s such a beautiful site to be at that park. Like, why does it feel so weird to be like build a cool ballpark and put fun players in it? It wasn’t that the most obvious thing in the entire world to do for like 90 years? I don’t know, we, we’ve kind of slipped far far far away from what obviously makes baseball attractive to people in any whatever market. We’ve like allowed this sort of, we’ve allowed the like new wave sports management people to come in and be like, we need to disrupt. We need to make baseball for the, for the digital age. And have that be the thing that sucks up all of the oxygen in this conversation. It’s kind of not true.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: If you still sell out every night, and people still want to come to the ballpark and buy jerseys, you’re still going to be extremely profitable, extremely profitable. As evidenced by the fact that the, the Padres have now gone from receiving revenue sharing checks to paying revenue sharing checks. Because they’re making so much more revenue. That’s pretty much all the evidence you need.
ALEX: Yeah. That Winning Fixes Everything, is what you’re saying.
BOBBY: I can neither confirm nor deny whether the Padres will win a World Series. That’s not, it’s not my purview. It’s, I don’t really care, honestly.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think it’d be, be fun. It would be bad if they lost 100 games for the next five years. But I don’t think that that’s gonna happen. There’s too many teams that are actively trying to do that.
ALEX: Yeah, I know. No, the Overton window on this has shifted. So far that as you say, it feels very radical to say, damn, the Padres are signing good players? Like, like, franchise cornerstones? Oh, they have, sorry, they have three of them? And they’re maybe trying to lock down a fourth? Imagined if Soto, if Soto signed and that–
BOBBY: I forgot he was on the team.
ALEX: –that was just your, I know.
BOBBY: Honestly, he’s on the team, I guess.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I forgot. I hope he doesn’t sign.
ALEX: I-
BOBBY: I prefer him to go to an American League team, that’s not the New York Yankees. Well, sure, if I had my druthers. I’d say you know, you know who’s really sick in the head? Mets fans. 7 of the top 10 responses to the Passan tweet breaking the news that Machado was signing the extension to stay with the Padres. 7 of the top 10 tweets were like Ohtani is a Met now. As if like it was just, he was either gonna go to the Padres and now that the Padres have spent the money on Machado. He’s gone to the Mets. Like we are sick.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We are unwell.
ALEX: But the cottage industry of–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I mean–
BOBBY: Just like reply guys.
ALEX: –Passan reply, reply guys are like MLB home run reply guys.
BOBBY: Yeah, announce–
ALEX: We have to, respect it.
BOBBY: –announce Max Scherzer retiring or something like–
ALEX: Like I’d–
BOBBY: –to respond to anything.
ALEX: Like you really just have your notification, your tweet notifications on just so you can get the likes, get the engagement, you know?
BOBBY: Can you do that now? Like every time Passan breaks a story, just like announced Arte Moreno to prison. Announced John J. Fisher to The Hague.
ALEX: How, how quickly do you think he starts hiding our replies if we do that?
BOBBY: I think he might already had our replies.
ALEX: That’s probably true.
BOBBY: Although we don’t reply to him often.
ALEX: Yeah, it’s more of a–
BOBBY: I know he sees what we’re saying.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I know he’s name [24:58].
ALEX: Oh, he names switches. I think he admits as much.
BOBBY: Well, I feel like, I mean, we could create bots that would reply to Passan. Except for the fact that now it costs like $400 a month to use the Twitter API. And that’s like, we don’t have enough Patreon funds to cover something that stupid.
ALEX: I don’t think so. No, I’d much rather pay A-Rod for a speaking appearance.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s called appropriate, correct appropriation of funds.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah, there’s a value add there.
BOBBY: Exactly. That’s an asset, not a liability.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: Twitter API, liability. Paying A-Rod to come on your pod, asset. Alex, some news with the Oakland Athletics. Can you guess what this news is about? It’s about the stadium.
ALEX: That’s crazy! What?!
BOBBY: Yeah, it’s about whether or not the Oakland A’s are going to stay in Oakland. Have you heard anything about this story?
ALEX: Ye- I might need more details.
BOBBY: I can fill you in. Okay, they might stay or they might leave.
ALEX: Hhmmm.
BOBBY: That’s what we know so far. And what we’re gonna know in the near future is that they might stay. Or they might leave. That it could be either one.
ALEX: That’s crazy.
BOBBY: You know, the Should I Stay or Should I Go?
ALEX: Familiar with it.
BOBBY: No, the news this week was that the A’s are trying to knock on doors around Las Vegas to see who will give them a large check with a comical amount of money on it. Film it–
ALEX: Just build a stadium.
BOBBY: –like a reality television show. You know, there was some talk this past week of who will fund an a stadium. Because we know that it’s not going to be primarily John Fisher based on what he has asked for in Oakland. And what he has tried to, no pun intended, fish for in Las Vegas. The Nevada governor as you pointed out on Twitter, the Nevada governor has said that, you know, they, they would prefer not to give more money to the Oakland A’s. I think part of that is because they gave $750 million to the Las Vegas Raiders to build their new stadium which is gnarly bro, $750 million of public funds and tax credits to build that stadium that nobody goes to. Except–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –for rich people and companies renting it out, to woo other rich people. Gnarly stuff, really gnarly stuff. Though, I mean Vegas has had sort of a love hate relationship with giving public money for sports teams. They did not give any money for the Golden Knights that was funded entirely by MGM Casino. Totally aboveboard, all good. No conflict of interest there none to be had. The potential future NBA team coming to Las Vegas has said that they will completely privately financed this is much more popular in the NBA. They like to own everything so that they can develop it exactly how they want to have it fully privately financed. That’s one way that the NBA outpaces MLB and NFL, the NFL in this respect, they don’t try to hold taxpayers hostage. They don’t try and hold public funds hostage. Suffice to say that the A’s would like some money from someone that is not the A’s. And so–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –it was reported this past week that Valley?
ALEX: The one and only.
BOBBY: Just gonna get through this. Valley confirms that they are in ballpark discussions with the A’s to put it, I guess like, right smack in the middle of the strip there. I really had no idea they planned to do that. I love, I love, I love architectural mock ups.
ALEX: Absolutely.
BOBBY: It is the biggest grift of all time, and the fact that we have not gotten into it that we have not created like a Shell company of Tipping Pitches where you just photoshopped ballparks into like the most popular, busy foot traveled parts of every city in the world. It’s like, you know, where you could put a ballpark? The Champs-Élysées in Paris.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: That’s where the Yankees could play. Like, look at this mock up. This is amazing.
ALEX: I know, they’re like, look, if you just raise, like 20,000 units of housing, right here–
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: –you could put a ballpark right there.
BOBBY: If you put a small nuclear bomb in the middle of the Duomo in Florence and blow up the Duomo. You could put the Mets there.
ALEX: Right, there’d be plenty of space for parking, too?
BOBBY: Right, and you could get, you could get a little panino right after, on your way out and you’re way ahead of the game. Think about how much that would do for the little sandwi- sandwich shops at [29:22].
ALEX: You know, you’re thinking outside the box. I’m just saying no one’s talked about this before. And–
BOBBY: No one has talked about this.
ALEX: –and I think it’s worth more consideration–
BOBBY: Once again–
ALEX: –playing baseball at the Duomo.
BOBBY: Once again, baseball stadium on international waters on an aircraft carrier. I don’t know why no one has thought of this. This is genius. You don’t have to follow any laws. You don’t even have to have fans. You don’t even have to have players.
ALEX: I’m trying to, to wrap my head around like what international laws like that teams owner would be interested in breaking, right? Like–
BOBBY: It’d be like the cruise division in succession, but for baseball team.
ALEX: Right, exact- like or you just like–
BOBBY: It’s an all inclusive cruise vacation with a seven game homestand including.
ALEX: Can you imagine all the drunk fans who would like stumble over the side, you know? [30:18]–
BOBBY: Yeah, you gotta be high, high walls on there, yeah.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, I’m not trying to, I, are you a cruise guy? Would you ever get on a cruise?
ALEX: No, God no.
BOBBY: Thank you.
ALEX: I would–
BOBBY: I would completely agree.
ALEX: –I would have before 2020. And I mean, even more so now. I just, that just sounds kind of miserable.
BOBBY: I’ve never, just never understood the appeal.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Oh, you’re trapped hundreds of miles away from land. With a lot of middle-aged people.
ALEX: Yeah. And screaming children.
BOBBY: And you can play poker, I guess.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You can see live Jazz. You can–
ALEX: You do–
BOBBY: –do like us thrice cancelled stand up comedian.
ALEX: You do get the–
BOBBY: Three nights in a row.
ALEX: –the first, the first strain of the new, the new virus that’s going around.
BOBBY: Oh, so, oh it’s like natural [31:06].
ALEX: It’s kind of like, like a ground, ground floor sort of thing. Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: Right. On the bright side, you might sink and you might die.
ALEX: That’s, you know? Yeah, on the right side.
BOBBY: So the A’s instead of, instead of trying to get where as they realized that it might be harder and harder to get public funds, because 750 almost a billion dollars is already aligned, is already tagged for the Las Vegas Raiders. They’re just talking to casinos, which is everybody’s favorite thing to do nowadays. Valley, on the other hand–
ALEX: Well, there’s women and money right now.
BOBBY: We’re spinning, we’re spinning one bankrupt company off and we’re just gonna reinvest in sports, baby.
ALEX: Yeah, it’s it’s worth noting, right? Like Valley is a, is a big company.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: That, that does sports betting and, and entertainment. And so Diamond, Diamond Sports Group, or whatever it’s called is, but one arm of that. But it is very rich, that this company going through a very, very public and slightly messy bankruptcy proceeding. Is like, yeah, there’s some interest in giving them a billion dollars.
BOBBY: Yeah, I feel like this is not what bankruptcy is supposed to be for.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like, I’m not a lawyer, obviously, I’m not a lawyer. But like, are you really just allowed to just roll all your debt into one part of the company and say that it’s bankrupt, even though the rest of the company is clearly not bankrupt? Like, why is there not some kind of rule?
ALEX: Where it’s like you–
BOBBY: Unbelievably successful arm of the company has to just like maybe loan a little bit of money over to this other–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –failing part of the company to float it. Like why, why does the company just get to just be like, now we’re not gonna pay any of our obligations? How is that allowed? Like, if you were like, I’m buying a house, but I’m claiming bankruptcy for my student loans. I don’t think that they would be okay with that. That is essentially what this company is doing.
ALEX: You know, that’s a really good idea. Oh, my God! Hang on!
BOBBY: You don’t get to Chapter 11 different parts of your financial experience, you know. Like you don’t get to the court in those off.
ALEX: Wait, so are you telling me the rules are different?
BOBBY: See, but I thought that companies were people? Like–
ALEX: [33:24] I know, right?
BOBBY: –Hobby Lobby thing like I can’t follow any of this law.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: I can’t follow it, I can’t. None of it makes sense.
ALEX: It’s not designed to make sense. You’re not supposed to understand it, Bobby. Let the, let the adults in the room handle this, okay?
BOBBY: Should we buy your loans with the Tipping Pitches LLC? With a subsidiary of the Tipping Pitches LLC, we purchase your loans and then we file bankruptcy for that subsidiary of the LLC. We go through Chapter 11 court and all of a sudden you don’t have any loans. Did I just find a loophole?
ALEX: I’m just making a couple of notes over here, real quick. Hang on.
BOBBY: The IRS loo- the IRS agent listening to this, like what the fuck are you guys’ talking about?
ALEX: I know. That’s fine, I don’t know what we’re talking about either.
BOBBY: Parody.
ALEX: And frankly, when it, when it comes to Las Vegas, I’ll fucking believe it when I see it. Like–
BOBBY: The A’s are not moving to Las Vegas.
ALEX: Oh, you’re, oh, you’re talking to a lot of people out there? Damn, that’s, no your girlfriend who goes [34:23] school, it sounds really cool, honestly.
BOBBY: Yeah, no she sounds–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –beautiful.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: She seems so really down to earth too, really nice.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: You know, it seems completely reasonable that you might put a baseball stadium on the Las Vegas Strip. It’s that’s–
ALEX: Only logical place.
BOBBY: –that’s for sure gonna happen. That’s so happening, it’s not even worth talking about on this podcast.
ALEX: Ohhh, it’s so dumb, man. I’m just tired of it. I don’t care. Should you stay or should you go? Just shit or get off the pod. Like–
BOBBY: I agree. I agree. You felt this way for like nine months. Okay, let’s move on.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: From one of baseball’s worst owners to another one who gives him a run for it’s, for his money. Let’s talk about Bob Nutting.
ALEX: Hell, yeah!
BOBBY: Bob Nutting, Pittsburgh Pirates owner, Bob Nutting, whose net worth was estimated by the Los Angeles Times to exceed $1 billion as of 2020. This is from CBS Sports. Is making it known that he’s not a fan of Major League Baseball’s economic structure or its Collective Bargaining Agreement with the MLB Players Association quote. This was on February 25, so just a day before we are recording this podcast. “There is no question, the CBA contained several things that were not good for the Pirates, and very few things that were excellent for us. He noted that he did vote for the CBA rather than casting a protest vote against ratification, because losing the 2020 season would have been bad for both the league and the city”. That’s really big of him. It’s just a really nice world that we can live in, where some billionaires are willing to put their own needs aside and vote for a CBA that just, just flat out doesn’t work for him at all.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That he is, he’s not getting anything from it. He’s not getting revenue sharing. He’s not getting national cable deals. He’s not getting a share of playoff revenue. He’s not getting expanded playoffs. He’s not getting any of that. Yet he voted anyway, he practically donated his entire net worth in this past CBA. But you know what? He’s not gonna sell the team, he’s gonna stick it out.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because someone might–
ALEX: He cares, he cares.
BOBBY: –take over this team. Because somebody might take over this team and make them worse.
ALEX: Right, and run it into the ground.
BOBBY: Exactly. And, and refuse to make the playoffs, and refuse to spend what you can spend. And never extend to any of your stars.
ALEX: Someone has to take on the burden of not signing Bryan Reynolds, right? And frankly, Bob Nutting is shielding another billionaire from having to make that tough call.
BOBBY: I fucking, I’m obsessed with this quote. I love it so much. “There’s no question the CBA contains several things that were not good for the Pirates”. Just no mention of what any of those things were.
ALEX: Yeah, what? What?
BOBBY: Which things aren’t good for the Pirates? What in the CBA is bad for the Oirates? What you want to be in the CBA, which is you get all of the money?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You should put something in the CBA where the players don’t get any money. That’s what the Pirates want. They should have expressly written into the CBA that Bryan Reynolds had to take that $80 million deal. That just names one player, Bryan Reynolds take the 8, the 7-year $80 million extension. That’s what should have been in the CBA, according to Bob Nutting. What else should have been in the CBA, according to Bob Nutting, Alex?
ALEX: I think, no more sell the team shirts, right? You’re not allowed to wear those anymore, frankly.
BOBBY: Because they’re duping him.
ALEX: Exactly. He’s, he’s been had once and he won’t be had again. But everyone owner’s dream, fans not being allowed to criticize or moves, right? I think that’s a big one. That’s something actually that, that fellow troubled billionaire John Henry spoke about, at the Spring Training. Discussing the, the quote unquote, “false narratives”, going around the team, right? Rejecting the not- rejecting the notion that, that he was booed.
BOBBY: I hate when there’s false narratives around.
ALEX: I, it’s, it’s the worst, right?
BOBBY: The worse when there’s false narratives, that’s the worst. I mean–
ALEX: It’s crazy.
BOBBY: –it’s bad enough when there’s narratives. But false narratives? Come on, I mean, it’s just the absolute–
ALEX: What do we, what are we doing here?
BOBBY: I think that’s–
ALEX: Still allowed in 2023? No.
BOBBY: What Bob Nutting really needed was a 30 team playoff. Hey, we’re gonna make, we’re gonna be in the playoffs this year. Oh, I love this because, okay, it’s such a, it’s I love when serendipity strikes. And there’s an owner who’s like, explicitly showing how delusional he is, while the all of the owners are kind of showing how delusional there are. There was, there was side by side tweets in my tweet notifications from potentially not part of this podcast, Evan Drellich and Jeff Passan. Evan tweeted about how during their negotiating minor league, the minor league CBA. Which, sure, I didn’t know that that was happening, no news on that. Probably not a good sign that we’re not hearing that much about how the negotiations are going. Probably means that they’re just kind of like, hammering out the easiest path of least resistance.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Otherwise–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –you’d kind of be hearing about like, them making a stink or like, there’ll be reporters talking about how it’s not going well, or whatever, I don’t know.
ALEX: There’s been very little like, there’s been very little in the way of like, a war of words.
BOBBY: Yeah, conflict is usually better for the labor side, when you hear about it.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I mean, that they’re actually fighting for something legit. Anyway, hopefully, that that they’re just like getting the easy stuff out of the way first, and there’ll be more news on that front, when the big fights are actually happening. But Evan said that MLB proposed during minor league CBA negotiations, that they would have the capability of cutting jobs. Meaning that they could reduce roster sizes and domestic reserve lists whenever they wanted to. That’s just I don’t know why they would think that they could do that. At the same time that Tony Clark, during a conversation about the economic reform committee, basically said, what we said on the podcast last week, which is that this is MLB owners way of floating that they want a salary cap. And Tony Clark said, we’re never going to agree to a cap, let me start there. We don’t have a cap, we’re not going to agree to a cap. So I’m glad that we had all of this like 48 hours of discussion about the economic reform committee. And we could all clear out of the way and talk about what they wanted to talk about and how mad they were at Steve Cohen. Just for Tony Clark to be like, I don’t know what they’re talking about, not happening.
ALEX: I, I also appreciated his use of the word, you know, we, we still believe in a, in a market-based system, you know. Because you got to, you got to use their tools against him. Oh, oh, hey, that, that free market you love so much? It’s right here. It’s right, it’s right here in front of you. That’s interesting that all of a sudden, you’re, you’re such a fan of rules and regulations, right? Because this is how most owners made their money was through the invisible hand of the, of the, you know, move in the market.
BOBBY: They’ve just, they’ve been very lucky. The invisible hand has been very kind to them.
ALEX: It has, yeah.
BOBBY: Okay, final grab bag topic before we answer a couple listener questions. And before we do or don’t talk to Evan Drellich. I’m just going to keep this bit going and keep it, keep going, ’cause we still don’t know at this point.
ALEX: You know, we’ve, we’ve cited enough of his work in this that it’s kind of like we basically talked with Evan.
BOBBY: But what if you just pretend to be him for the next 30 minutes? Okay, this was really hard to report.
ALEX: Can I just, yeah, can I just like read from, from the book?
BOBBY: Quoting it chapter verse.
ALEX: It was crazy that one time that Jim Crane was doing some–
BOBBY: [42:04]
ALEX: –back of the napkin math, how much money. A fan of–
BOBBY: It was crazy that one time that Evan, that Ken Rosenthal called me and we decided to report this story. And here’s what Ken said, final thing this week, Rays reliever, Ryan Thompson, it’s a little bit of a thread, lot a bit of a thread, actually, a long thread on Twitter. About his thoughts and concerns over arbitration, salary arbitration. Which did not materially change in this, this most recent CBA. The players union tried to get one year of pre-arbitration, team controlled knocked off. And to have every player hit arbitration after two years, which is how the system was initially structured. The owners did not go for that, the players dropped that proposal relatively early on in the process. In favor of focusing on some other things, including raising the luxury tax, numbers more significantly than owners wanted to. I, I think, I mean, we’ll put the link in the description to Thompson’s thread. I think the largest takeaway was, or, or rather, why so many people thought it was revealing was how disingenuous some of the arguing against Bryan Thompson felt when he laid it out in his thread. How the Rays who are this cutting edge team who employ relievers, and pitchers, and all players in a way that not a lot of other teams know how to do effectively. How they would come into this salary arbitration negotiation. And they would cite a FanGraphs stat called blow ups, which doesn’t really have all that much to do with how well he was actually performing. It’s kind of like a picked and, picked and chosen sample of this very narrow stat. Which qualitatively might seem more negative. Because, frankly because of its name, because it’s called blow ups to an arbitrator who doesn’t know that much about baseball. And Thompson does a really good job of laying out there, him and his agent side of him, him and his agent and the players union side of why he felt like he should make X in comparison to other believers who had made similar amounts. This is how arbitration works, you compare yourself to what previous players have made in winning their arbitration cases. It’s a, it’s a an illuminating thread, but I will say I felt like people thought it was more surprising than it actually should be at this point. Like, I feel like we should know most of this stuff about arbitration.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I mean, I know we talked to Jerry Blevins about more or less the same thing that Ryan Thompson is outlining here last year on the podcast during the lockout. But I think that, I’m always surprised when this idea comes into the discourse that owners should just agree to what the player wants, because it’ll save them the trouble of pissing the player off. And I’m like, don’t we realize that the, that, that pissing the player off is the point? Like that, that winning every fight is the entire purpose of their existence?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Because if it, if owners just made the obvious logical choice as to how things could work smoothly and fairly in the system, well, then they wouldn’t be owners. They wouldn’t exist. We just have 30 Peter Sadler’s, you know. And not to say that Peter Siler doesn’t try to fight and win arbitration cases, all owners tried to do that. But we would have 30, 30 owners who were making obvious win now moves, and not quite concerned about saving as much money, right?
ALEX: No, you’re spot on. I mean, owners have gamed arbitration to work in the fa- in their favor. To the point where it is both not a very effective system and actually outlining the value of a player. And is the only thing that is actually getting a lot of players paid close to what they deserve, right? Major League Baseball wants to get rid of salary arbitration, and just–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –create a system that would aggregate and pay out money just based on, you know, a set of determining factors. I don’t even know what that would look like. But Mark Normand that actually points this out in his, in his newsletter, that the fact that Major League Baseball is fighting to so hard to get rid of arbitration is probably proof enough that like, it’s still serving some of the purpose that it’s designed to. And this right here is at the very core of that, right? I mean, this, this thread comes on the heels of Corbin Burnes, talking very frankly, about his arbitration fight, right? And–
BOBBY: Corbin Burnes.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: Come on the pod, brother.
ALEX: And talking about how, you know, that relationship is really changed after you go through something like that. Because it’s not even learning what the organization really thinks of you. Because this is not what they think of you, right? They don’t think that you’re a bad reliever, but it does behoove them to make that case for a couple hours in January–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –right? Like, like the–
BOBBY: This is the structured, the formalized lying.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But their favorite thing to do, which is lie about how much money they have, and are willing or able to give to players. Like–
ALEX: Right. Oh, really? Blow ups, that’s crazy. So you guys use that? Like year round, too? Like, I assume you use that in all your, you know, big brained analytics that you do. If you, if you use it to make a case in arbitration.
BOBBY: The best thing that could possibly come out of arbitration would be like publishing the cases on C-SPAN. I know neither side would ever go for this. But–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –to see Erik Neander go up there and be like Ryan Thompson, here’s why you don’t deserve 200,000 extra dollars is because of blow ups. And then to also see, you know, the, the Rays loving media of the world be like, but actually this is why this is correct. I feel like, that would be so satisfying. In order of what owners want, well, no free agency at all. That’s number one. Aside from that, is no arbitration whatsoever to replace arbitration with some sort of sanded down formula that in the aggregate is more pro owner than arbitration is. Because there are no outside determining factor that is just cold hard, did you do x? And we will not back down from x, knowing that it will save us more money in the long run. Next best thing after that is the current version of arbitration, which is honestly you’re trying to just deceive arbitrators.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Like hoping that overtime, you can deceive them more, because you’re willing to stoop lower than players are willing to stoop in the hearing, frankly. And that is not that is like the compromise version. And that’s why it’s still in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. And then below that entirely, is just like, arbitra- you know, what they really don’t want is to give back years of arbitration. To give more years of arbitration within that six years of team control. And so they will do anything not to do that. I think that we underrate the fact that they wish that they could get rid of arbitration entirely. And looking at it through that lens helps you understand why they would go to arbitration hearings at all. Because if they just settle on every single one, well then it sort of undercuts their argument that they don’t think that there should be salary arbitration every six years–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –when they go and try to make that argument.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So–
ALEX: But they also then set up a precedent for themselves that they’re not interested in following, which is paying the players the amount of money that they’re asking for.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: That would be, that would as kind of a slippery slope for them.
BOBBY: Something that happens in the collective bargaining and negotiations that once you’ve gone through a collective bargaining and negotiation, you realize, you can see this pattern when you watch it play out in other industries is that management always pretends that everything that they do is so hard. They’re like, it’s so hard to hire people.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: It is so hard. You would not believe how in any other conversation about hiring. Well, that’s just going to completely derail our business model.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: If we add any other steps into that process, this company is going under tomorrow. And so when I look at arbitration, they act like it. I see teams acting like it is so hard to determine a player’s value. And it’s so hard to come to an agreement on that value. And if they admitted that it’s actually not that hard to come to an agreement on that value, then they would have to admit that the players are worth way more than they’re actually getting an arbitration, you know.
ALEX: Right, right. Like arbitration does a lot of work to kind of prop up this myth that there’s this, you know, really small pool of money that’s available. And if they pay Ryan Thompson an extra 225,000 they’re going to overdraw their bank account, and that is–
BOBBY: Yes!
ALEX: –happen.
BOBBY: And they have to keep up that charade, otherwise, the whole idea of pretending that they’re working way harder than they actually are starts to fall apart.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And this is also the case with luxu- the luxury tax, too. They have to pretend like it’s so hard to standard that luxury tax and if they go over it for two years in a row, by God, John Henry is going to have to sell Liverpool FC. You know, he’s gonna have to hit it big in the fucking lima beans future whatever the fuck it. I don’t think it was lima beans. I know I keep saying lima beans, I think what was it? Soybean.
ALEX: Soybean.
BOBBY: Corn and soybean. I keep saying lima beans, I don’t know why.
ALEX: You know, frankly, I, I couldn’t tell you the difference, really.
BOBBY: The charade is the whole point.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But like, unbelievably archaic way of defending the fact that what you’re doing is trying to suppress salaries above all. You’re building in these mechanisms, and these structures, and these fake arguments, and these, these hurdles that you’re imagining out of thin air. Just so that it doesn’t seem like you’re saying, we don’t have the money to pay him.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because you do have the money to pay him. You’re just lot- rely on these structures. Okay, should we do a couple listener questions real quick and then get out of here?
ALEX: Yeah. Or–
BOBBY: Or.
ALEX: Or.
BOBBY: Or.
ALEX: Maybe throw to Evan? Yeah.
BOBBY: Feels like [52:44]. There’s no Evan interview happening.
ALEX: I know, otherwise, it’d be a two-hour episode. We got a couple good listener questions from the Slack that I’ll read real quick. The first one comes from McKenna, and it’s about real changes, which we have talked about, like not at all. And that’s cool.
BOBBY: She asked my head goes completely empty when I hear the phrase pitch clock. I have nothing to say about it.
ALEX: Yeah, I’m like, no notes. Sure.
BOBBY: Nothing.
ALEX: Damn that–
BOBBY: This is not–
ALEX: –you do right, that base does look bigger.
BOBBY: I am not in support or denial of the pitch clock. I would like to be abstained. I would like to be relieved from jury duty over the pitch clock because of my prior, I don’t know, political opinions, about sharing thoughts about rule changes.
ALEX: Well, unfortunately, you’re gonna have to share at least one thought. Because McKenna’s–
BOBBY: Urgh!
ALEX: –question is, I’ve been listening to some stuff about the pitch clock, and I’m wondering if you think there’ll be any discretion from umpires on things like curtain calls or a milestone or cheering when someone comes up to the plate returning to a team they played for for a long time? Are they going to be pretty strict in enforcing it? I want to know what you think, but right off the bat, I, my instinct is that they’re going to be pretty strict in enforcing it because they kind of have to. Like you, the second you sort of start carving out exceptions, the second it kind of becomes pointless. But what do, what do you think?
BOBBY: As I search through the depths of my head, no thoughts come to mind. I think there’ll be strict and enforcing it for like two years. And then I think anything’s on the table.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Then I think it’s like the pitch clock operator will start being kind of loose with when they actually start it.
ALEX: Right, yeah.
BOBBY: You know, like, because the, the clock doesn’t start until the ball is back to the pitcher.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So if it’s in between batters, and there’s a curtain call going on, you know the catcher will just hold on to the ball longer. Well we will find ways to manipulate the pitch clock totally. As Max Scherzer has promised, as someone outside of my apartment is aggressively honking their horn and agree then.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We will find ways to manipulate the pitch clock. I, I like carving out exceptions, you know.
ALEX: I mean, yeah.
BOBBY: But for the love of the game exception to the pitch clock. The curtain call exception.
ALEX: Well, it’s like–
BOBBY: What about like, what about the Joe West staredown exception? You know–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –can’t start the pitch clock if Joe West is not behind the home plate now he’s retired. But if the Joe West type is not behind home plate because he’s staring down the manager in the opposing dugout.
ALEX: Right, what is he going to call a pitch clock violation on himself?
BOBBY: On himslef? if you won free challenge to each team. I can’t believe how much discourse has been about the pitch clock so far.
ALEX: It’s kind of crazy, honestly. And now there’s like discourse about like, if fans can see it or, or not, and like how big is the pitch clock? And where’s it gonna go?
BOBBY: Everybody’s like, is this too fast now? No, it was too slow before but is it too fast? I just don’t have a thought.
ALEX: And like I’ve sa- yeah, I’m not, I don’t know, is the next pitch coming?
BOBBY: I’m gonna sit this one out, guys, and ake play off. All right, next question.
ALEX: This next, this next question comes from Christina. If you’re a baseball player coming into Spring Training, which cliche thing would you most likely say for example, in the best shape of my life? Now, I, I told you this question before we started recording and you were like, I got one! So, the floor is yours, my friend.
BOBBY: I’d be like my bulk went really well this offseason.
ALEX: Big bulk, big bulking guy?
BOBBY: I’d be like, I tried to lean bulk, you know. Tried to, tried to just eat a lot of protein lean bulk. But these are all made up terms. I love like, I love like scrolling Instagram Reels, and it’s just like, it’s just algorithmically designed to make me feel like shit about myself.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Yeah.
BOBBY: It’s all of a sudden, I’m like bodybuilder TikToks, like people arguing about whether how honest you have to be about whether you take steroids or not. Like what the fuck is happening? But I’d be like I was, I, I, I’d come in, I’d be like I was eaten, eaten all offseason to try to bulk up and I’m gonna–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –get lean over the course of Spring Training and the early parts of the offseason. So that I have sustainably built a foundation of muscle mass to last a whole year.
ALEX: That’s good, you really did think about it.
BOBBY: I did. I this, I care about this stuff.
ALEX: Yeah, it matters. This is the first time we hear from players in, in a really long time.
BOBBY: I’m all about, I’m all about muscle mass and, and sustaining your physiology as you get older.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: We got to be lifting weights, guys. You don’t need to be doing two hours of cardio everyday, heavy lifting weights.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: That’s great for you.
ALEX: That’s so true.
BOBBY: To hit the, to hit the weight room, Alex, God damn! Come on! We should lift before every episode of this pod. Just turn it into like gym bro Tipping Pitches.
ALEX: Uh-hmm. Can we smoke cigars while we record them?
BOBBY: No! No! No.
ALEX: It’s quickly negate any, any workout we’ve done?
BOBBY: Well, you know, A-Rod is really into like lifting and he’s always like doing pull ups on his Instagram story, which–
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: –is great for you. It’s really good for, you know, pulling back strength is pull ups. But maybe if we turn this into a, a fitness pod/baseball podcast, that’ll make him even more likely. We already care about finance, so it’ll make it–
ALEX: Yeah, we’ll talk about business.
BOBBY: –more likely talk on the pod. Well, what would you say, what would your cliche be?
ALEX: I feel like I probably have a few that I, that I, that I rotate through. You know, it’d be a little like Scott Boras see, like, I gotta make sure I get one into every single soundbite–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –that I give out, right? So you know, I think I talked about the, the importance of, of the veteran presence on the team, you know. Having, having those guys in the, in the locker room is really gonna, gonna make a difference. But also, you know, the youth is really going to provide a spark for us this year. We’ve got to, we’ve also got a really young team in addition to all the veterans.
BOBBY: Right group of guys.
ALEX: It’s we got a great group- hey, you know what? Everyone’s 0 – 0, right now. And, and we just, we got to focus on doing the little things better.
BOBBY: Would you like say, you know, would you like pick a book to fake read in the offseason?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: I read The Art of War for December. What if you came in and you were like, plant-based diet? That was my thing, this offseason, plant-based diet. Your plant-based diet is just Cheez-Its.
ALEX: Right, exactly. It, it grew, it was a part of something that was growing, that one [59:45]–
BOBBY: Cheez-It’s are, Cheez-Its are not vegan. Vegetarian, not a–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –plant-based diet. Cheez-It’s not plant-based. Damn, that’s an [59:53], dawg.
ALEX: Yeah, I know. I think I’d go the other direction, I’d say I’m on like the Jordan Peterson diet, you know. Doing all Rahmi, my insides fucking hate me, I feel terrible all the time.
BOBBY: You’re doing this interview while crying.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: I don’t know why we asked you these athletes to tell us about what they did all offseason. And whether they feel like they’re in good shape or not? What does that have anything to do with their masculinity?
ALEX: Yeah, I just want to throw everyone for loop. I’ll tell a different story every day, I don’t care.
BOBBY: I like it.
ALEX: Plant-based guy yesterday, meat-based today.
BOBBY: You could do the LeBron, you could do the LeBron, and be like I watched the Godfather every day this offseason.
ALEX: Right, yeah.
BOBBY: Your real answer, if you came back to Spring Training, they’d be like, how, you know how’s your offseason? Be like, I can’t really into like, pool kids.
ALEX: Yeah, right.
BOBBY: They’d be like what are you talking about? And you’d be like, you know, I’ve been listening to a lot of new records and comparing them to the stuff that I like to my youth, you know?
ALEX: Yeah, yeah, I think it a lot about like Fifth Wave Emo lately.
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah.
ALEX: Evan, Evan, are you a fan? Like–
BOBBY: Evan, I know you love this stuff, I know!
ALEX: I’ll share my playlist with you. I got you. I got you.
BOBBY: Another Tipping Pitches pod guys would ask you about what kind of music you’re into if you were actually going to be on this episode.
ALEX: Do, do you think that Tipping Pitches would still exist if one of us was also, also a baseball player?
BOBBY: Yeah, I do.
ALEX: Like, like it may not, may, it may not be our Tipping Pitches. But like the, the concept of this podcast–
BOBBY: Ohhh.
ALEX: –I feel like the mantle would be taken up by someone, right?
BOBBY: Interesting, interesting [1:01:31]
ALEX: Or, or we just be, you know, one of us would give us the peek behind the curtain, you know?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And tells us how [1:01:37] gets made.
BOBBY: One time Chuck Klosterman was on the big picture and untypical like, Chuck Klosterman hits plant once asks a question about how pop culture works fashion? He goes, he’s like, when you’re watching a movie, are you imagining that person existing in the real world? Like, what does the actor being in the movie necessitate that the actor in real life doesn’t exist in that version of reality? So like, The Rock being in fast and furious, does that mean there’s no The Rock, like WWF star?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: So in this version of reality, does one of us being a Major League Baseball player, mean that there is like Alex Shasley, goes to NYU and meets me, like freshman year? Like, does there have to be a replacement to keep the space time continuum in this pop culture verse? Or, or does it just mean that I just like don’t do this ever? I find a different path. I get into Jordan Peterson. And I mean, all carnivore diet.
ALEX: I mean, if I’m being completely honest, we’ve been recording far too long. And I, I’m far too tired to even think about any of the words you just said.
BOBBY: Food for thought, bro. Plant-based food for thought.
ALEX: That’s right, that’s right.
BOBBY: Great question, Christina. Great question, McKenna. As always, you can, anybody can ask a question to the Tipping Pitches podcast, tippingpitchespod@gmail.com. 785-422-5881, if you would like to call and ask that question in your own dulcet tones. We’d love to get some voicemails as we head into March, as we head into the month before the sea- the month of the baseball season starting, rather. Because it’s always fun. It’s always a fun way to end the podcast is to answer a couple listener questions. And really, just completely get off the rails. That’s like the best way–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –to finish a pod and not know whether it was good or not. Is just, just go down some rabbit holes at the end.
ALEX: Just start talking about Jordan Peterson, right? And that might be a first for this podcast.
BOBBY: Yeah. He’s everywhere. nowadays.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: What percentage of baseball players do you think? Whether they like or no Jordan Peterson or not, if you put a Jordan Peterson video in front of their face, they’d be like, yeah, that guy knows what he’s talking about.
ALEX: A large portion.
BOBBY: Like 30%, higher?
ALEX: Probably higher. I mean–
BOBBY: I feel like baseball guys would be more like Rogen guys. Kind I know that those are sort of like two sides of the same coin but just the, the presentation of Peterson does not have like the makeup for–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –a baseball guy. He’s like wearing Tweed, sitting in a chair like in an empty room. I never really of every video that I come to with him, it’s like how did he get here? Why, why is he talking about this subject?
ALEX: Doesn’t, doesn’t Syndergaard read Jordan Peterson? Didn’t he like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –post him on his like Instagram story at one point?
BOBBY: Yeah, and I think he like read his book. It’s like part of his–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –like, I need sit in an ice bath and read books persona.
ALEX: Right. Yeah, I think I, what I realized is I would just be Noah Syndergaard at Spring Training.
BOBBY: Wow, you got a lot of work to do.
ALEX: I know. I got a bulk, is what I got to do.
BOBBY: You got to bulk and you got to bring that hairline back a couple inches, brother.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: Good luck to Noah with the Los Angeles Dodgers. he’s probably gonna throw like 97 and have like a 2.70 ERA this year. But whatever, that’s, that’s-
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –that’s for future conversations. Thank you everybody for listening, patreon.com/tippingpitches, three different tiers, $5, $7, and $12 if you so choose to check that out a lot of really fun stuff that I’m looking forward to in March as we head towards this new baseball season. And I hope that you will share this podcast with someone as we do. Because we get back into the mood for baseball. If not, that’s okay too. Thank you for listening anyway, and we will be back next week.
[1:38:26]
[Music]
[1:38:38]
[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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