SPEAKER_02 0:07

Welcome back to another episode of Brewers Babes, a Milwaukee Brewers and Baseball fan podcast for babes by Babes. I'm Aaron. I'm Lisa. And with just six games left of the regular season, our beloved smallest market in baseball, Milwaukee Brewers, have once again shocked MLB fans and experts alike by making the postseason for the ninth time in the last 10 years and winning more regular season games than any other team in baseball for the second team in a row.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

And there has been a lot of talk about whether MLB is giving the 2026 Brewers the attention they would give a team like the Dodgers if the Dodgers were on this streak. And among the more conspiratorial theorists of us, uh, which includes you and me, Aaron, we love to make up shit all the time on the podcast. Um, we're wondering if the league would actually prefer Milwaukee to not win a World Series heading into the next CBA. Uh and so to talk us through what a salary cap would actually mean for the Brewers and to give us a deeper look into the economics of baseball, we are very happy to welcome Bobby Wagner from the podcast Tipping Pitches with us today. Hi, Bobby.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Hello, thank you for having me. I love to be I'm on my like salary cap road show. You know, I'm going around to many podcasts denouncing the ethics of a salary cap and helping us all talk through and understand what the hell is happening in Major League Baseball.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Well, that's great because that's what me and Lisa were just talking about before you signed on here. What do we need? How how are we going to get the word out to fans that like a salary cap is not the answer? Like I got I got real fired up about it. And so I know that we have we have our own opinions and I don't always express them as eloquently as I'd like to. So having having some more expert opinions on it would be wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yes, you could call me in from the bullpen on the bullpen cart just to rant about the salary cap. I always have a little bit of juice left, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

You're the Aaron Ashby of Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Or the Sean Doolittle, I guess, with the same politics as Sean Doolittle.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Perfect. Uh before we get into it, for those who don't yet know Tippy Pitches or you guys, can you give us a little background on your show?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah, uh Tipping Pitches started nine years ago now, at this point. Alex and I started the show because we were best friends, we were living together in college, and we found ourselves just talking late, late, late into the night, like at three in the morning about baseball, just yelling about the state of the game and how the players that we loved were not getting the same representation that we wished that they did. And I believe it was our partners who were like, We wish that you weren't talking loudly at four in the morning about baseball. There's all these other hours of the day that you could be talking about this. And so I was working at the radio station at the time, and so we just started playing around with the idea of a podcast. This is 2017, so podcasts were firmly established, but but certainly not as ubiquitous as they are now. And the show uh evolved kind of as we evolved, like throughout our 20s, and started caring more about uh labor and politics and the way that those things crossed over with sports. And I got involved in you know union and labor movements, and so we started really honing in on the MLB CBA and how transformative it was for professional sports in America and just the history of the union and things of that nature, Marvin Miller's career and life. And so the show has become this kind of Frankenstein's monster of us um kind of joking our way through the the way that we see the world through the lens of baseball, um, with a particular focus on kind of the culture of the game and uh the the labor industry as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

I think the first episode I listened to of you all's was last year, the year before you raided all of the sponsor patches by like evilness of company.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Yes, yes. So we we like try as often as possible to come up with like fun ways to talk about these things because they can get like let's be honest, like it can get really heavy to like talk about politics and sports and you know these the billionaire owners and how they affect our lives day to day, not just how they build the teams and whether they do or don't invest in the team. Uh, these things are all so interconnected and related, and we have such a window into them now, like with the way the internet works that we haven't always through baseball history, but we do like to have fun, like we like to make jokes and stuff. So we ranked the evilness of the jersey sponsors, knowing that that doesn't really mean anything, but it was funny for us. So we hoped it would be funny for the listeners.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

I love that. Like to add some levity to it because Lisa and I we touch on these things a lot in our episodes as well, but it's it is a lot of yelling, I think, and it's a lot of like I got I come to baseball to escape these exact same things in my real life, and then I have to come here and watch it play out, you know, when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself and having fun. And like, how do you how do you pull the fun out of that?

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Yeah, it's hard. I remember yelling a lot more at the in the early days of the podcast and like not knowing what to do with it. And now maybe we've papered over it with humor, but I do think we find some of these things genuinely funny. So we've carved our own little world, our own little corner of the internet, like so many of us have, like you all have here on on the sort of brewer's corner of the internet.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Oh, yeah, we're very important.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Yes. You're the one and only brewer's babes.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

We do talk a lot on our show about baseball being kind of a microcosm of the larger societal structures, and you have to have some levity with that. I think Mark Adanazio, our owner, I mean, the bar is so low, but he is not the worst owner. He did steal sand.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

And so, like, he stole public sand, and it was just such a metaphor for everything because he also took half a billion dollars from taxpayers for the stadium while Milwaukee Public Schools is having a lead crisis, right? So, like the idea of baseball as the pinnacle of like and and the lens through which you have to look at the rest of the world and how it holds up to that is you have to bring levity to it. Otherwise, you can't watch it. Otherwise, it just bums you out. But can you tell us about your relationship with baseball itself? Like, why do you love baseball? How'd you get into it?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, I grew up uh watching baseball. I'm a gigantic Mets fan. Alex is an A's fan. We've yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate that. We I guess I suppose this is like my you know punishment for taking David Stearns from the Brewers is coming on the Brewers podcast and watching you all with the best record in Major League Baseball and the Mets being officially eliminated like weeks before the season was over. Um yeah, I grew up as a huge Mets fan. My family is from New York. Um, but I was growing up in the Philadelphia area, so I was growing up in and firmly in enemy territory. Alex is a big A's fan, and so we bonded over kind of the little brother quality of our franchises, the kind of cursed aspect of the franchises themselves. Um I played baseball like up through high school and stuff, but then when I went to college, I had kind of stopped watching professional baseball for a few years because I was really busy with school and preparing for college and stuff. And then I went to school in New York and suddenly I had access to Mets games on cable. And I had all of this downtime where I was not studying and not writing the essays that I was supposed to be writing and not going to the classes that I was supposed to be going to. And so I was like, hey, I'll throw on some Mets games. Um and then it just kind of reignited the flame for me. Uh, and that became my favorite sport to watch again. And I just really like my relationship to baseball is such that it I it's how I tell time. Like when baseball is ready to come back, I know that warm weather is about to be here. I remember like moments and milestones in my life by what was happening in baseball at the time and who was winning the World Series, and I remember where I was when I was watching these games. It's so it's such a calendar sport because it lasts so long, and it is such a microcosm for life in that way. And so I find I do kind of buy into all of that mishagas of like finding the meaning in baseball through uh those sorts of kind of nostalgic qualities that certainly Major League Baseball loves to prey on, but there's just there's some authenticity to those that I have found, and it's definitely a way to find community too, like the tipping pitches extended universe, like all the people who have been part of our Patreon and who are in our Slack and you know who we've met through doing the show and who've come on the show, like it's such a wonderful way to kind of meet people in adulthood, which is really hard to do without something like this.

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SPEAKER_02 8:43

Let's get into this. So um speaking of salary caps, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine

(Cont.) Brewers Babes #76 - Talking Salary Cap and CBA with Tipping Pitches

SPEAKER_02 8:49

who's a Braves fan the other day, and we were talking about the Dodgers and the Brewers, and um, I have a I have friends who are NFL fans and they they want to talk about salary caps all the time. It works for the NFL, it works there, it can work here. Um, I completely disagree because it's a completely different sport. How do we solve the parity issue in Major League Baseball? And you said there there isn't one, there's not really an issue. This is a this is a created problem that they're pushing on us to get us to believe that a salary cap is necessary, and they're doing it by allowing the Dodgers to buy championships year after year. If there was a problem with parity and fairness, the Brewers would not be winning as often as they are, as consistently as they are. So can you talk about what like is it actually out of balance? Does it mean something different to people who are mad about the Dodgers or talk us through that?

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Yeah, I I don't think baseball has a parody issue. Like I want to start by saying that, but I also I'm not so biased that I would suggest that baseball's lack of parody issue is necessarily because of anything like financial equality in the game or anything like that. Like these teams are not equal when it comes to finances, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the only way to compete is to spend a ton of money. What the Dodgers have done over the last like 10 to 15 years is they have spent a lot of money and been as smarter, smarter than any other team in baseball. And so that has given them this sort of structural advantage that a bunch of teams are trying to recreate and failing. If it was easy to do what the Dodgers are doing, the Mets would have done it by now. Because when Steve Cohen bought the Mets, he said we're gonna become the Dodgers of the East. And that has failed, like hilariously failed, comically poor in trying to recreate what the Dodgers have done. And it would also mean that like the Brewers wouldn't be able to win as many regular season games as the Dodgers over the last like five or six years. But part of what gives baseball parody is the nature of the game. Football, if you have a good quarterback, you can win year in and year out. And if you draft the right quarterback, you can win the Super Bowl. It has like next to nothing to do with you know the roster spots 40 through 57 or whatever. Whereas baseball, you really can't have like two-thirds of a good roster and win the World Series because you will be exposed over the course of a 162 game season, certainly, but definitely over the course of like multiple seven-game playoff rounds, having to go back to the bullpen the way that the teams use bullpen these days, you really need depth. And there are only a few ways to build that depth. It's either you pay for it on the open market, or you you are able to build internally a player development pipeline that is you know leaps and bounds better than the rest of the league. And that's what the Brewers have done. But I think that enough teams are smart enough to spend smartly and continue to compete. Like I always say on tipping pitches, if you could only be smart or rich, you'd rather be smart than rich. You wouldn't want like a rich and dumb organization is not going to make it as far as a smart and cheap organization, frankly, with the way that baseball systems are set up to reward internal player development and to reward building through the draft because of how like suppressed those players' values are, because of things like pre-arbitration and arbitration. So that's like kind of the long way of saying just like you don't need to spend the money to be able to win in baseball. It just so happens that they have a convenient villain at the moment that MLB has sort of poured gasoline on the fire in the Dodgers.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I guess that is that is true. And there is this saying, or at least for Bruce fans, is like, yeah, we do great in the regular season, but we choke in the postseason because we don't have power because Mark and the front office didn't go out and spend during the trade to get us a bat. And so how does that argument play out when that sort of thing happens over and over in the postseason? Like we can compete until the off-season. So whose fault is that?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Yes. I well, whose fault is it? It's a really interesting question. I tend to put, like, if we're divvying up the blame, I tend to blame the smaller market owners than I do the sort of a middle or or bigger market owners who are attempting to compete. Like, if we're being honest, uh we're really who we're blaming here is Billy Bean. Like, we're blaming Moneyball because that became the end vogue way to try to build a team with one hand tied behind your back, and that hand tied behind your back was the millions of dollars that are going into owners' pockets year over year, not spending to compete to try to sign some of these free agents away from other teams and continue to grow. Like, I know that you know Freddie Peralta had a terrible year, but the Brewers trading away their best pitcher from last year is kind of worse for baseball if we're something like lowercase B baseball than anything that the you know the Dodgers or the Yankees or some of these bigger market teams are doing or trying to compete. Is what small market teams have done is they've said, we're not even gonna try to retain any of these guys. Like we're we are going to trade them for future value because future value is more important to us than wins. Like that that has been the subtext of the Moneyball era cheap players and saving money and being able to continue to attract people to the ballpark by putting a reasonable product on the field is more important than competing at the top, top, top echelon. It's like gravy if we do win the World Series. And now I think it's like a statistical anomaly that the Dodgers have won the way that they have won in the last couple years. But if you go back three or four years, the Dodgers were the ones choking in October more regularly. I mean, they won the 2020 shortened playoff shortened season, but like the 2010s were characterized by 105 win Dodgers teams losing in the first round of the playoffs. We are so quick to forget that baseball is is a fickle sport in the way that it actually plays out in October.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

This was also pre-Shohei, though. Right? And I think Shohei is just one of those, like you're not gonna buy another Shohei.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

You're just not gonna do it. You're not you're not gonna buy another Jacob Mesrowski. It's just not gonna happen, you know? And so the homegrown talent I think is something that Milwaukee does really well. But the other thing Milwaukee does that I think fans don't really realize a lot is benefit from the Dodgers spending so much money and having so much money, right? Like the ins and outs of revenue sharing, I think, is lost on a lot of people. Uh, can you talk through how teams like the Brewers do benefit from the Dodgers spending?

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Yeah. So MLB's revenue sharing is kind of like intentionally complicated. Like the the harder it is for people to understand, the easier it is for fans and for the league to then benefit from people throwing their hands up in the air and just going, I don't understand. The Dodgers spend so much money and they make so much money and it must be unfair. But the way that MLB's revenue is structured is that after the 1994 lockout, um, the sort of compromise that came out of the few the couple CBAs in that post-lockout period was that they would start to share local revenue more evenly. So each team takes 48% of the money that they earn locally and they put it into one big pool. And if you are kind of one of the bottom half of those teams, the revenue sharing receivers, you get paid out of that pool. And if you are one of the top half of those teams, you pay into that pool. And so 48% of your money, if you're the Dodgers, is shared and split amongst the teams that that make up the bottom half of the league. And so for a team like the Marlins and for teams like the Brewers, uh, you know, it's not just the Dodgers, of course, it's like the Yankees, the Mets, the Phillies, other sort of bigger market teams that are making more and local revenue. This is things like their their regional sports network package, but also things like ticket sales, concessions, anything that is unequal among the 30 teams that they are making in their local market, you're getting in a lot of cases, you know, somewhere between 50 and 80 million dollars per season from that system. So on top of what you make for your own TV revenue, on top of the approximately $70 million that you make from national money, which all the teams split equally. This is things like ESPN and you know playoff packages and those national deals that the league signs, these teams are doing all right. Like they're they're they're doing fine. Um, and the Dodgers making more money actually helps those other teams about equally. Like it helps them about proportionally. Now the Dodgers get to keep the kind of lion's share of it, they get to keep 52%, but also they spend more. Like they spend more on their organization, they spend more on their facilities, on their planes, on marketing, on you know, ad sales in Japan and on players. So uh it's it's obviously not an exactly equal playing field, but to that I would say, like, how would you even create an exactly equal playing field? Like, share every dollar exactly the same, pay every dollar, the every player the exact same amount of money. It's hard to really imagine the world in which people want to create when they're saying like it must be exactly even in all cases, because that doesn't really work for any team, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

No, and I I've thought so much, we talked so much about um the TV deals and um another difference with the NFL. You know, they get to control all of that. So that's how a small market team like the the smallest market, the Green Bay Packers, can be a nationally loved team and make all this money and and be as successful as they are. But MLB can't do that because of the sheer number of games. So there's the blackouts, there's everyone having control of their own thing, then there's all of these broadcast networks that have gone under, and now we've got Brewers TV and whatever TV, and everyone's doing it separately. So it seems to me that that's that's a large chunk of revenue that teams get. In terms of fairness, I don't even know how that would work. If MLB was to own all the rights, it would still be the Dodgers generating the bulk of the revenue from the whole system, am I right? So, in terms of fairness and who's carrying the weight and who's bringing in the money, how do how would we make that system even fair?

SPEAKER_00 18:21

I know it's such a it's such an interesting question, right? Because so MLB has like about the they currently with like the national deals that they have. So you're right, Aaron, that like the NFL doesn't have regional sports networks, like they don't have these sort of like ballet sports deals, they don't have SNY in the case of the Mets, they only have national TV rights, and they've kept it this way intentionally because the NFL is like the only game in town on Sundays, and they want it to be truly accessible everywhere. Like they want it to be you just turn on your basic cable package and you can watch the NFL because that is like the league that they're running. From a business model perspective, the league that MOB is running is like literally their eating innings. Like when there's no other sports to watch, there's baseball. When there's no other sports to run Toyota ads, there's Mets games. Like when there's no other sports in the you know the dog days of summer, these RSNs retain value by being able to have something on that isn't just like dumb radio guys having arguments with each other about like whether Monsoto is lazy or something like that. They literally get to put the games on, and that gives the sport value. It's just a different business proposition because the nature of the schedule and the teams MLB has been they've been trending towards more national rights, like they've wanted to do that because they think they perceive that it will help their franchise value because they think that it's like more guaranteed to rise, while like cord cutting has hurt their value for signing big, big RSN deals. But they let that system kind of collapse right out from under their eyes, and they sort of like extracted everything that they possibly could while making all these regional sports network, you know, executives rich, and knowing that these companies were gonna go into bankruptcy. Like they've been barreling towards this moment for a long time, arguably intentionally. Um whether that's fair or not is like I really think it's it's like it depends on what the owners think. You know what I mean? Like it's it's weird because like if they went to a more national model, the reason that like let's say ESPN or you know, um ABC, like, although those are the same parent company that's Disney. We have just monopolies in this country left and right. So, you know, ESPN, NBC, Netflix, Amazon, the reason that they pay a premium, like, no offense, like, is not because of the brewers, it's because of the Dodgers. Like, they they're not putting Brewers games on national TV every every week. They are of late because the brewers are really good, and you know, if it's a Mizarowski start, it's gonna get a lot of eyes, and it's like an intriguing story. But the reason that these executives like pony up billions of dollars for these national contracts is because of the Dodgers and the Yankees. Like in 2024, they were over the moon when those teams.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

So, like, if the owners are like, Yeah, well, we're gonna, you know, shift the business model to be more national and share it more equally amongst us, I suppose like that's that's their right, that's their business. I still don't really necessarily understand why that means that the players have to say, we're we're gonna take less money because of that. Like, I don't I don't see necessarily how those two things equal each other.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Right. So speaking of the owners, Dick Monfort is the chair of the Labor Relations Committee for the owners, the owner of the Colorado Rockies, who have they have a place in my heart. I got married at Coorsfield. My partner is a Rockies fan, he's from Colorado. Aaron was at my wedding. Like we what a beautiful wedding then, yeah. It was great. We love we, you know, we love baseball. The Rockies were not terrible. Dick Monford hadn't gotten rid of Nolan Arnold, he hadn't paid the Cardinals to take Arnado away from him yet. But he is the chair of the Labor Relations Committee. He is the one who has who has run the Rockies into the ground, who has made terrible financial decisions about this team. So why should anybody, or why do you think anybody does believe that Dick Mortford, who is pushing a salary cap hard, has the best interest of baseball and fans in mind? Like, why would anybody believe that? Is that it seems bonkers to me?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

It's such a great question. I mean, I wish I could ask Dick Montfort how he got into the position that he got into. I mean, it's just confounding that he has so much power on in a group of billionaire owners who uh are extremely. Competitive with each other and with other even non-sports billionaires, that they're just like, you know, we're trying to turn it over to Tricky Dick Monfort over there. I do think that there is a sort of begrudging respect for the way that he has run his business. The Rockies, though terrible on the field for the most part, still for a long time were one of the highest drawing organizations in baseball. Highest attendance. Um, they built a beautiful stadium. They kind of did all of the things that you're supposed to do as a modern baseball owner, besides build a good team. And so he sort of rose to power on the labor side by being able to kind of rest on those laurels in particular. Not necessarily anything that he did in terms of building like a top class organization when it comes to baseball development. But I've always been fascinated as to how he amassed the kind of political power because there are other owners who maybe are as influential or even more influential who don't put their name out on the, you know, on the labor relations committee because you know they think that that'll put them too central in the spotlight. Like Bill DeWitt is an example of an owner who carries a lot of influence in on the ownership side, um, because the Cardinals are destroyed organization. And similarly, they have built an incredible business model. They've also won a lot, and he comes from a like an MLB owner family, so he is quite influential as well. Uh, I don't know, maybe he was just like the only one who was willing to talk. Because he was like the only one who was willing to like say the bombastic things in the room that the owners were hoping that they would be able to say it to them.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Could be. Mark A is on the committee with him, and I I would love to just hear their conversations because I feel like they probably butt heads a little bit. Or I would like to know where Mark agrees with him and where he disagrees with him. I think that would be just because I'm nosy, like I think that would be good.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

But can I ask you two a question about Mark A and the labor committee particularly? Because I'd love to hear your perspective on this. Alex and I have been theorizing. So for a long time, uh, the presumption was that when Rob Manfred steps down, um, this guy called Morgan Sword, who is kind of like one of the important uh executives on in the commissioner's office, is gonna take over as commissioner. That's like what a lot of like inside baseball people think. Alex and I are working on this like dark horse conspiracy theory that actually Mark Atanasio is gonna be the next commissioner of baseball. What do you think about that? Oh, and have you ever considered that?

SPEAKER_01 25:02

He'd be like following Bud Zielig again, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 25:06

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

I don't think Mark Atanasio would have gone to Woodstock 99 the way Rob Manfred did. So that's definitely a plus.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

One of the prerequisites. Yes. It's one of the prerequisites of being an MOV owner. Yes. Or commissioner rather, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

I think Mark has a really good reputation in baseball generally for the way that he runs this team. Like he's pretty hands-off, right? He's not Steve Cohen, like in the room making decisions. He does get a lot of flack, especially in 2023 when the the stadium deal went through, and rightfully so, because it was half a billion dollars to fix a roof that still leaks because they decided to build front offices instead. Like I think he likes baseball more than Rob Manfred. Aaron and I have a theory that Rob Manfred just hates baseball. Yeah. He's just doing this because he absolutely he hates it. So I don't know, Aaron, what do you what do you think? You think you think Mark A would be a good commissioner?

SPEAKER_02 26:04

A good one?

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Is it an oxymoron at this point? How well could he show for the other owners? Because that's all the commissioner really is, right? You just like to take one for the team with these guys. So I don't know. I don't know how much he'd be willing to do it because I do think that he has a respect for the game that I don't think Rob Manfred has.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

But I do know he's also like dipping his toes into some private equity stuff. You know, he bought a soccer team, there's all this other stuff, so he's not different than any other any other billionaire in that respect. I don't know. What do you what do you guys want? You want Mark A in there as a dark horse?

SPEAKER_00 26:49

I I don't I don't find myself like rooting for one person or another to be the commissioner because I kind of think the commissioner is more of a figurehead of what the general vibe and politics of the owners are at any one time. Yeah. I I do think that like the private equity era is upon us. The dawn of the private equity era is upon us in Major League Baseball, but also sports in general. And obviously Atenasio made his money through private equity. So that mindset he could relate to a lot of the new ownership groups who are coming in. This is part of why we have this theory. I was just curious about whether or not that would like drive you all up a wall for the next two decades if you had to watch Mark Atanasio hand the World Series trophy out every single year.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Well, that would sting, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_01 27:37

It would, but we did Sealag, unless he was handing it to us.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Yeah, exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

We still have the um Ampham has the Bud Zealag experience, like this museum dedicated to Bud Zealig that you walk through. I refuse to go in it out of principle.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Um, but like you've never you've never been in it.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

No, I haven't either.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Wow. I don't know. I think I'm gonna have to go to that.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

I still have never been to you come and we'll go together, okay? We'll walk through it together for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

If you ever happen to visit Chicago for any reason, just take a 90-minute trip up to Milwaukee. There it is. Yes. Um, I guess we talk about valuation of teams, right? And one of the reasons that we know the owners are pushing for a salary cap is because they want their team valuation, like it's gonna go up. You have a set number of what you pay a player, you know how much that's gonna be for the next couple of years, you know that you can pocket everything else, right? Like part of that valuation comes from stuff like the Rickets owning everything around Wrigley Field. Like they own everything, they don't include that in their in their baseball valuation, like it's not included any revenue sharing or anything like that, even though I would argue it should be because that it wouldn't exist without the Cubs playing. Um, and then you think about teams like the Pirates who do really well revenue-wise, they take in a lot of money in ticket sales, they take in a lot of money in uh like food sales and everything, but Bob Nutting won't give any money to anybody to play. So, what is Bob Nutting gonna do with a salary cap? How is a Pirates fan's life going to change if Bob Nutting gets a salary cap that he wants?

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Alex and I worked on this video with More Perfect Union about kind of the oncoming labor battle and how the model of MLB ownership has changed in the 21st century. It is no longer these businessmen who decide to buy a team and make their the business of their life baseball. It is now part of an investment portfolio. And so franchise values are not just like a piece of the puzzle, they are kind of like the whole thing. This is all they care about when it comes to baseball. And it's been this way for a long time, but it's never been so myopic that all they cared about was franchise value. And you know, the reason that these teams want a salary cap so badly is because when you have a fixed expenditure like that, your biggest cost is fixed. That means that anything else, any other new business models or streams of revenue that you introduce to the game, those are now like multiplicative. These there's a much higher return on investment because you know you don't have to spend as much of that, and players can't negotiate for as much of that if they're capped. So, how is Bob Nutting's life going to change if you had a salary cap? I think the easiest way to say this to pirates fans is it will just confirm the way that he has been acting already. There will be no other mechanism to pressure him to act differently because his money will be immediately guaranteed. Now it's just functionally guaranteed, but a salary cap basically doubles that guarantee. You know, it says that like he gets even more revenue no matter what. He doesn't even have to they literally don't have to win a single game for him to make as much money as the rest of the owners. And so, therefore, why would he try to continue to win games? Right now, the way that Bob Nunning's life is, it's like he actually can make more money if the pirates sell more tickets. That is not true if there is a salary cap. He'll make the same amount of money if the pirates sell more or less tickets. It doesn't really matter. So when I talk to pirates fans or when I talk to other small market fans, I say, Do you want the way that your owner has behaved to be codified in the CBA? Do you want that to be the new model of MOV ownership? Because if you do, then you should want a salary cap. If you don't, then we should talk about other ways to compel these owners to spend and actually have to compete to earn their revenue. Because right now they've sort of broken the system that used to kind of work. And so now we have to figure out a way to reinject life into it.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

So can you give some examples of what some of those other components would be ways to get owners to spend?

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah. So I do think they did a pretty good job of this in the last CBA. They it they introduced a new concept called the pre-arbitration bonus pool. This is like any player who is not yet eligible eligible for arbitration, which means they haven't played three seasons in Major League Baseball, they are now eligible for part of this predetermined bonus pool. I think it's like $50 million or maybe $100 million, I can't even remember. But this pool gets split among all of the players who are pre-arbitration. And if you, you know, win an award, or if you, you know, finished a certain, you know, top five in MVP or top three in rookie of the year, you are now eligible for like bonuses of millions of dollars, which is you know multiples more than you make in your minimum salary as a pre-arbitration player. So it incentivizes both teams to call up young players because they know that this money is dedicated for them anyway, and they will get you know benefits like extra draft picks and things like that if a if a player wins an award. Um, but it also incentivizes these young players to like, you know, want to stick around the team because they were getting so underpaid for the first couple years of their career. Um, and they won't necessarily need to take the largest contract that anyone will give them when they get to free agency. So expanding a program like that actually puts money in younger players' pockets who are creating way more value proportionally than they ever have in baseball history. It used to be that like you called up a rookie and they were bad. And now it's like you call up a rookie and they might be the best player in baseball. They might be Jacob Mizarowski, you know, or they might be Tatsurio. These the player development has become so much more sophisticated that pre-arb players are creating much more value, literally from war, but also for the franchise itself.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

Well, I would love for this to be a way to incentivize teams to keep homegrown players around as well, because that's something as a Brewers fan that's been a bummer to watch, is like we're we have such a great farm system, we grow all these great players, and then the end goal is for them to be traded away to someone else in the in the peak of their career. I just feel like it kids love playing in Milwaukee. Players always talk about how they love playing for the Brewers, they like playing for the team, it's fun, they like playing for Pat Murphy, but like their end goal, they have to know even from the beginning is to go become a Yankee or a Dodger or a Met, you know, because that's where the money is. And I would love for teams to be incentivized to keep these players around and to incentivize the kids. Uh I keep calling them kids, um, but the players to stay with the teams that they grew up with because some of them are kids, though.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

You know, some of them are like literally 20.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Or we're just all now. But it's like that that someone would be proud to play their entire career in Milwaukee and that they would be paid, you know, they wouldn't have to take uh a smaller salary, have to take a pay cut to stay in Milwaukee, you know. Aaron just misses Williadonus very much. I was really so much.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

He's so cool, he's one of the coolest players in baseball. Uh he's also, from what I understand, one of the most well-liked players by other players in the league. He seems to be love it. Yes. Yeah, there's there are elements like that too. I do think that like no matter what comes out of this CBA, a restructuring of revenue sharing will come. Whether that means like we have a bigger percentage or we have stricter penalties on the luxury tax that reallocates more of that money um to smaller market teams so that in theory they can invest that. But the truth is, like, we have to put in in place some sort of mechanism that says to the Marlins of the world and the pirates of the world, you actually have to spend this money that you get. Right now, it just says you have to put it back into the baseball team. But what does that really mean? Like if you spend it on yeah, remodeling the clubhouse, or if you spend it on infrastructure to help people get to the ballpark, that's technically putting it into the baseball team, but not really, like, not how it was written, not the spirit of the CBA the way that it was written. And so stricter penalties around what these teams can and can't do with that money, I think, is paramount. It's just a matter of enforcement. It's a really hard thing to enforce and make these owners do because they police themselves. The only thing that could force an owner to actually put that revenue back into the team is what's called a grievance, which is like the players' union would say, You're not following the CBA. We're going to grieve this, we're going to take this to neutral arbitration. And that process, like quite literally, takes longer than a CBA lasts. Like that can take up to like five years. Um, and then it'll be like meted out in the courts if it gets challenged, and it's just it's a really challenging, hard process. Um, and so the the players union has taken grievances against MLB owners and it has dropped them in the course of other collective bargaining agreements because actually just bargaining a new CBA would be a faster way to kind of actually get the alleviation that they're looking at.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

We're uh we're both union households here, so we're well aware of grievance procedures.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Aaron. As am I. When we so I uh I used to work at this production company called The Ringer, we made like sports and pop culture podcasts and a website and everything, and I was part of unionizing the staffers there. And when we would talk about like putting grievance language in the collective bargaining agreement, or when we would talk about filing agreements, if we felt like they weren't following the collective bargaining agreement or the spirit of the the the collective bargaining agreement, we would look, we would sit down and we would talk with our union reps, we'd be like, do we think that we have both the patience and also like the like do we think it's gonna be effective enough to spend two years doing this? If we do, like that they might the answer might be yes. But the answer in a lot of cases, and for I think the players' association with like grieving revenue sharing, uh the answer is no. The answer tends to be no.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Yeah, it's like uh ask forgiveness, not permission, except also not forgiveness because they don't give a fuck. Nobody's apologizing.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

They're just like they break so many rules or like they just act so flagrantly for so long that like the procedure can't keep up, like the bureaucracy of the world of labor can't keep up, especially like there's no national labor relations board anymore.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

I was gonna say the NLRB is pretty gutted, they're pretty gutted, like they've gutted these systems, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

So it's tough, it's tough.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

Well, speaking of doing things above board and legally, can you break down the Mark Walter, what he's done, and if his if his fraud is the actual reason for the Dodgers and their payroll?

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Yeah. Oh boy. Um this has obviously been a big pet peeve of mine over the last couple months because I think there are a lot of people willfully misunderstanding what happened. So Mark Walter made his money um by owning, he made his money in private equity, but also uh he's like largely invested in insurance companies, um, life insurance companies in particular, who sell these annuity policies to older Americans in the case that they want to stop working. This is like in the replacement of a 401k, or you know, I do think he also has companies that sell life insurance policies, which obviously, if you have a partner who dies, you get that paid out. So he collects like a ton of money through these companies. And it is one of the like like last regulated industries in the United States, because if somebody dies, you need to have the money to be able to pay out their life insurance policy, or if someone retires, you need to have the money to pay out their annuity. Um, so you are allowed to invest that money, but typically you're only allowed to invest that money in like really, really safe investments, really like low return, um, you know, your classic sort of investment portfolio like bonds and very simple things like that. Mark Walter pioneered this kind of trade where he sort of took the money from those companies and took more of it than like a riskier amount of it from those companies and reinvested in his personal assets, um, which you are allowed to do to some extent. Like it's not illegal what he was doing necessarily, but you aren't really allowed to do it like at the level that he was doing it without disclosing it publicly. Because the people whose money that you're putting into the Dodgers, into buying the Dodgers, I should say, are supposed to know that you took their money and bought the Dodgers. And I suppose it doesn't necessarily really matter to them if you're still paying out their annuity, like if you can still cover that money. But I think what the DOJ is looking into right now is like, actually, did he overleverage himself and could he pay that out if something went belly up? Like, or would he would a lot of Americans be in trouble in that case? And so I think what has happened is a confusion of what he used this money for. Um, it does seem like he used this money to buy the Dodgers, it does seem like he used this money to buy the Lakers and to buy Chelsea FC or part of Chelsea FC, a controlling stake in Chelsea. And he bought uh an F1 team and he owns the entire women's hockey league. He owns a lot of sports assets, and nobody exactly knows where that money came from, but a lot of it did come from this kind of trade. And so the money in the first place that led to him getting ownership of the Dodgers definitely seems like it was borrowed from this practice. But then once you have the Dodgers, they are an incredibly profitable outfit. Um, so it's actually more likely that he was using the Dodgers to kind of reinvest money back into this other into his other business practices than like he was using funny money to put into the Dodgers. We know where the Dodgers revenue streams come from. There are a lot of like other really sort of tangential, somewhat confusing pieces of the fact that he owns the Dodgers TV station and he has taken some money and covered some of their debt from insurance companies. That that's like probably a little bit more detailed than your listeners are looking for. But essentially, what I think is going to happen is that he is going to have to find a way to come up with the money to pay back to his own insurance companies, or the federal government is gonna come down on him. Um, or he will strike a deal.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

Are they though?

SPEAKER_00 41:39

Yeah, probably or he'll strike a deal with them, or he'll sell the Dodgers. Those are the three outcomes. There's no outcome in which we find, at least my opinion, is that there's that it's very unlikely that we find out that he was stealing a bunch of money like in a Ponzi scheme to put into Shohei's contract. Like that's not what happened here, really.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

No, he was just gambling other people's money to do it, which is legal. Yes, not not not ethical or moral.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Certainly not. But if you want to go looking for immoral ways that MOB owners have made their money, you could find a couple of ways. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Uh it kind of reminds me of um a couple of years ago. Uh who was it? There was a company, I think it was Northwestern, who tried to sell a bunch of it policies to some school districts in Wisconsin that ended up being like really, really risky. And uh the school districts went underwater with it. Like I think five or six school districts. And now that's the speaking of like patches, you got I would have to go back and listen to that episode, but that's like the patch for the brewers now is the Northwestern Mutual, where like they they did this.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

I think it was actually Stiefle, which is the Cardinals patch. And they yes, they were sued by the SEC for what you described, which is uh they duped five Wisconsin school districts into buying $200 million in unsuitable securities that were um tied to CDS collateral.

SPEAKER_03 43:08

Super risky, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Yeah, very, very risky. So uh yeah, it's not it's not all above board what's going on here. For anybody who wants to look into what some of these owners are doing to make the money that they are afforded to buy these franchises, I would check out um Jim Crane, the owner of the Astros, who has a section on his Wikipedia um titled War Profiteering, uh, as well as the uh Rangers owner, whose name is escaping me.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Um Dakota Access Pipeline guy.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

Yes, Ray S Ray Davis, who uh yes, he owns 40% of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 43:46

Has ravaged many communities across the country.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

And the uh Baltimore owner, uh, he was doing like finance security for Osama bin Laden's parents on 9-11 or something like that. Like it's yeah, super fun times. Great. Love this.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Interesting stuff going on. I love this for us in the ownership suite of Angel League basically.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

You know, Mark stealing sand isn't so bad.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Yeah, literally, it's not. That's why we have made so many jokes about it on the podcast. We're like, this is such a like this is such a lowercase, like I don't know, unserious scandal.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

He did say he's moving to Milwaukee in like one of the most recent broadcasts. He was in the booth and he said, Me and my wife are moving to Milwaukee. And now I kind of feel that's such a Milwaukee-ish cry, like such a Midwestern thing, you know. Or we're just gonna steal some sand. They don't, you know, we're just Gonna build something nice here, you know.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

So did you all follow the resolution of that that came out this past week or like a week or two ago?

SPEAKER_01 44:44

What he said he settled, he settled for like a couple million dollars, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:47

Yes, he settled with the California Coastal Commission for illegally changing moving a seawall, which was like he stole the sand, he he reappropriated the sand, uh, and for blocking access to the beach while doing it for backing you for using, I think, back hose like on the beach illegally. It's really funny. I I was reading it on the podcast and I was like, this is so unserious. Like, there's in some ways like a victimless crime compared to what goes on in these ownership suites.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Yeah, it's been it's been really fun to make jokes with the fandom just about sand. Like it's been great. But my favorite part of that story is that it wasn't even the environmental destruction that did him in, it was a neighbor being pissed off about the noise. Literally.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

What could be more relatable than that? You know, your neighbors pissing you off by remodeling his backyard or something, except in this case, he's so rich that his backyard is the Malibu coastline.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

Yeah. Oh Mark. I guess maybe he'd be an okay commissioner then. That's his crime.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

Yeah, he probably would. He probably would.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah. Uh, but he is like, as you said before, he is he does come from a private equity background. And I think people are catching on now more than ever that private equity just leads to the insidification of everything it touches. And you can see that coming for baseball. Like you see it coming. Just how do we stop it in general? Can you talk through like what private equity is doing to baseball and then how we stop it?

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Yeah. Wow. I'm gonna try to put off the answer to how we stop it as long as possible because I don't have any answers yet. If you think of any, let me know. It'd be great to know. Um, so what has been happening in private equity with with baseball and private equity over the last few years is that the more traditional type of owner, which is like this, you know, billionaire industrialist, either it's their family's money or they made their money by creating a company that they then sold for hundreds of millions of dollars and then invested that back into Major League Baseball. These guys, though they are extremely wealthy, they're more in the like, this is gonna sound ridiculous, but in the like two to five billion dollar net worth range. And that is enough money to never have to think about money ever again for the rest of your life and own a professional sports team. But it's not enough money to just, it's not Steve Ballmer being worth $110 billion. It's not Steve Cohen being worth $25 billion. It's a different scale that we're talking about. And as these owners have aggressively expanded the league and aggressively expanded things like real estate, they've needed, they've needed more money. They've needed more more capital. And rather than going to the bank and saying, can I get a loan that I have to pay back, or or God forbid, making more money or investing their own personal money in the team, they've just taken on additional financing from these absurdly liquid private equity firms who have trillions of dollars in some case to splash around in multiple industries so that they can get a favorable return a few years down the line. And that's what we've seen with Major League Baseball is that private equity has come in as a way to service some of the debt for some of the owners, like the Lerners or even like the Steinbrenners with the Yankees. Like they have amassed um, you know, the twins went through this, the poll ads went through this, where they've amassed something like 400 million of dollars, 400 million dollars of debt. And the banks will keep saying yes forever because we know that like sports teams are never gonna go bankrupt. Nobody ever let that happen. Um, certainly not in this era of sports ownership, uh, with the franchise values the way that they are and with the revenue streams the way that they are. Uh, but you do have to pay this back at some point, and so going to another private equity firm and saying, hey, do you want to give us some money for a portion of this team helps them do that. The trouble that where the danger is, is that these private equity firms, I mean, literally they're like self-admitted, they're leeches. They come in and they they extract what they can out of a business and then they let it go bankrupt because they don't own it all. Like they don't, they're not actively invested in the continuation of this product. We saw this, uh, I think probably the first big example in American life that really shocked people of the way that private equity was moving through the world was Toys R Us. Like they acquired Toys R Us, this like storied store that used to be on everybody's corner or in the everybody's mall, and they ran it into the ground, and then they got extremely wealthy by extracting the revenue before the like consumer behavior could catch up, and then they took on all of this debt, and then they just let it file for bankruptcy, and now there's no Toys R Us anymore. I don't think that's what's gonna happen to MLB, but if private equity got their way, that is what would happen. Um, I think that there are like politicians who wouldn't who would not probably let that get that far. I hope. I don't know. Um, but that is what private equity wants to do. That's like the stated business model because they have their hands in every single industry at the same time. So it doesn't really matter if one industry goes belly up to them. That's like a boon, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

Politicians in Wisconsin, both sides of the aisle right now are just, yeah, let's bring in private equity.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

And and it and data centers. So we're we're really having a lot of fun over here.

SPEAKER_00 50:06

I mean, it's only a matter of time before, like, you know, the NVIDIA CEO or like the OpenAI CEO owns a baseball team. And then we're really gonna have to grapple with whether any of this money is real. You know, that's gonna be a real, real challenge for uh, I think the structure of the sports owner, like the archetype of the sports owner.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

Maybe even the players won't be real anymore. Maybe we'll just be rooting for like Bitcoin Jones.

SPEAKER_02 50:33

I got we'll just feed the stats into AI and they'll tell us who won. Right. It'll just it'll just be like a little screen you get to read through every game takes place in the virtual ballpark.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

A concept that I'm obsessed with. I love the virtual ballpark. I think it's so ill-suited to the modern world into sports.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

They did the thing on Apple TV the other night where they had the like virtual experience. Is that what you're talking about?

SPEAKER_00 50:57

No, this is so the virtual ballpark, it's even dumber than this, Lisa. It's even dumber. It's like it's like a basically like a 3D rendering of the ballpark that you can watch the game happen like digitally instead of watching it happen in person. So if you it's like a cheaper way to buy a ticket to the game, and you can like go into the virtual ballpark, which was a computer program that MOB was running on MOB.com, and you could like pretend like you were sitting in one of the seats and watch the game unfold that way. It was so dumb. And they were really into it for the course of a couple years. Um, and they really thought it was gonna disrupt the experience of fandom in baseball. Unfortunately, they were wrong.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Uh reading this uh Bill Bryson book called uh One Summer, it's about the summer of 1927 in America, and there's this whole big section about baseball and Babe Ruth, and it's been really fascinating and fun to read because he's kind of like a fact dumper. So, you know, you get all these fun little factoids as you're reading, you're getting like a history lesson, but it's like all jam-packed full of like fun little facts. And he was talking about how baseball was so popular when this when the uh stadiums were full up. Kids outside would act out what was happening inside the ballpark, like they would hear about it, and then they would like run these fake bases, and then people standing out on the street could like watch the game being performed by children like slightly after the fact. Reminds me of that.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

Right, right. Except that's actually beautiful and sweet in the virtual ballpark, like animated, like lagging, and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:30

You reminded me of that episode of community where the dean gets his virtual reality like running man thing. Do you remember the one? You're just like, I am all powerful. It's just like an 80s virtual reality thing, and it's just it's just Excel.

SPEAKER_00 52:45

Yeah, it's a really good example of like boomers or like Gen Xers, like really thinking this new technology was way cooler than it was. Like me and Alex see it, and we're like, I have to create to see what this is like, and it's so incredibly dumb and bad. It was like the metaverse. It was like it was like Zuckerberg with the metaverse, is like the best like comparison that I can make for it.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Did you ever read Snow Crash by Brandon Sanderson? Because that's that is the story, and it's a dystopia, but like that, it's like you're you're a sim, right? And you're just living your second sim life out, and I see it play out. I'm just like, we're taking the wrong lessons from the sci-fi authors. We're just we're we're taking all the wrong lessons. Um, but I know we've also taken up a lot of your time. So um thank you for being with us. I only I really have like one other thing that I want to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 53:39

Yeah, let's hit it.

SPEAKER_01 53:40

I think so, like we mentioned before, Erin and I were both like big, we come from union backgrounds, we are labor households. And when I think about the players' union, um, I think, well, it used to be a lot stronger, right? Like people I think used to, it seems like more of a push now to get the younger players to understand what unionization means. And I think that's true across the board. Like it's just harder now. Um, but I wonder what you think of this idea I have that some of like part of the reason the players union is getting pushback from fans is in part because the players, they're not really great at the solidarity part of labor, right? Like they're really siloed, and part of what makes union strong and what makes labor work is union solidarity. And that is an aspect that just it seems to be missing.

SPEAKER_00 54:31

Yes. I think that I say this a lot on the podcast on tipping pitches, like I don't necessarily mean this as like a criticism of the individual players themselves, necessarily, or even the people who work at the players' association, many of whom I think wish that there was more of this, but the makeup, the political makeup of the players is is a challenging organizing task. Like it's challenging when I I think it's like it's generally easier to organize people who either are extremely exploited or who have a sort of like political context for why organizing can be helpful in the workplace. And that is kind of what solidarity is. It's like banding together and knowing, taking a principled stance over why you are fighting for a lot of these things. I think that the economic success of major league baseball has made it really hard for players to understand just how exploited the players in the 50s, 60s, and 70s were getting by these owners. And so then it becomes a history lesson. And that's challenging. Like when you're just talking about, you know, educating players about what the nitty-gritty of collective bargaining fights was like in the 70s. Like, I really had a great time reading Marvin Miller's autobiography, but I doubt more than 10 or 15% of current major league baseball players, and that might even be high, have read that and and kind of experience that history firsthand. They, of course, know what all of these things are because they're taught what these different sections of the CBA are and what they mean for their careers. But that is an incredibly tall task to get players to care about like anybody's career but their own. They have also been trained to try to make the most out of this very, very limited window of their career. And so there are a lot of structures that are working against that. That being said, I do think that like the average player who I talk to does care about the idea of perpetuating this idea of this being a career, like cares about the next guy. I just think that that doesn't necessarily always lead them to the kind of necessary aggressive or like militant or confrontational behavior that a union needs to have in order to win against management, because so many things are stacked against us, frankly. Like, so they have all of the institutional capital, they have all of the power, they have all the politicians on their side, they have the law on their side. The only thing that players have is like withholding their labor and fighting over it. And I think that we're kind of in an era where players are a little bit squishy about that because they're worried about perceived being perceived as spoiled, they're worried about being perceived as these like millionaires who are ungrateful, and a lot of them don't have the the um like literally the language, but also just like the the political context for saying, like, yeah, but those guys are billionaires, and like they're way more exploitative, and they're way more taking advantage of you guys than we are as players. Like, you come to the ballpark to watch us, you don't come to the ballpark to watch Mark Ostanasio, even though we think he's funny. Um, so like that kind of billionaire bashing that they would need to do would be really hard for the current set of players to be able to do. Um that's why we try to do it on the podcast as much as possible, but it's it's kind of like a a narrow thread, honestly. It's a narrow needle to thread.

SPEAKER_02 58:01

And I think, I mean, I know we're talking about players, but public perception of the a millionaire and a billionaire, I think most people don't actually fathom the the difference, you know, what's a billion dollars versus a million dollars? It's astronomical. Like, and I think most people just don't don't quite make that connection. So it's easy for them, you know. I'm not a millionaire, I'm not a billionaire. It's easy for me to say, oh, you know, what are they fighting about? But the issue is at the end of the day, they're profiting off the backs of the laborers and they're not doing any work themselves. And that's that's the whole issue. That's the whole issue, right? But it's it's hard, you're right, it's hard to right.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

The challenge though is that so many people think just putting up the money to buy the team is work. Like people think that's work in America. Many people think that owning a business, even if you don't do anything for that business, which many of the billionaire owners don't really do anything to improve their businesses, as we know, even if you don't do anything, people just think your existence is actually work. Uh, and they think that the idea of being wealthy is aspirational. And and a lot of the players, like they talk like that too. You know, a lot of the players take the money that they make in baseball and they invest it in an NFL team or they invest it in a soccer team of being an owner. And so there are inherent contradictions in what is going on here. I do think that getting down to the basics of the issues in the sense that the players create the value of the league, and so therefore, they should take home more than half of that value, and they certainly shouldn't be capped in the value that they can negotiate for. I think that that is a simple enough message that they should be able to continue to make it, and I hope they do.

SPEAKER_01 59:37

And in terms of like cross-union solidarity, I really hope that the lesson people take away from this is not that somebody making a million dollars while I'm paycheck to paycheck is unfair. But like, look how much more value I can get from my labor if I unite and like march on the bus, right? I would by the way, like in terms of solidarity, I would fucking love and I would watch all the time any like YouTube channel about like Bryce Harper bird dogging Rob Manfred or Dick Monfort or anything. Like, how much fun would that be? Just like he could have a whole second career. I would watch Bryce Harper yell at any owner anytime, and I think it would get a lot of views.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:21

I I mean, I agree. I think that the players union, I wish that they showed a little bit more awareness and solidarity with the rest of the American labor movement. I know that that American labor movement has been really hit very hard, and so there are like fewer and fewer opportunities to be able to do that. But the the players union is not the only union that exists in baseball. You know, there there's there's unions of stadium workers and they go on strike a lot, and you don't hear players talk about it. And there's people who make the products that make the game, you know. There's these are these there's people who there's teamsters who deliver products to keep the industry of baseball going, and those people go on strike too. And I wish that they did a lot more of that. I really do. Um, because I do think that it would it would go a long way. I just don't know that I like there's that there's many that many players who like care about that personally, and you do have to kind of live that, you know, you kind of have to really care a lot about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:18

Yeah, I think that's probably like the frustrating aspect for folks who are doing it. But like Aaron said, at the end of the day, it's just about how much you value your own labor.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Yeah. And the last thing that I will say for fans who maybe don't necessarily care about all the details of this, but are like intrigued by that dynamic, is that if the players make less money and if the players like don't show this solidarity, it doesn't mean that things are gonna get cheaper. It just means that owners are gonna make more money and they don't need it. Like they're not gonna pay, they're not gonna charge you less for things because they're paying players less. They didn't get $10 billion by acting like that. Like, just think about that for just two seconds, guys. Like they extract as much money out of the equation as they think they possibly can.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:07

I had this wild experience when I went to Camden a couple weeks ago where I was buying a beer, um, which was $16, by the way. And it's the the the now the way you go through it is you you get the beer out of the refrigerator and then you put it on that magic thing that reads what it is, and then you pay. And so there was a woman who would like she took the beer, she had to open it for me because that's the policy. So she opened the beer, she put it on the thing, she pushed the button, and then she said, Um, by the way, I'm a volunteer, and so tips are really appreciated. And I I walked away because there was a line behind me, and I regret not being like, What the fuck do you mean you're a volunteer? Like, volunteer. What are you volunteering for? Blah, blah, blah. And I got I got real mad and I've been worked up about it ever since. Because I'm like, what do you sent me a text volunteering? I know. I was like, the you're not okay. I spent $40 on a burger, a beer, and some fries. And then and then you want me to also pay the stadium employee with with my like, you're not making this any cheaper. Why is the beer $16 and you're not paying your stadium employees? Why do you have volunteers? How hard? I'm getting real mad about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:11

I just certainly not because you're paying the players either, too, because like the Orioles are not in the luxury tax and they're not taking any of that extra money and putting it on the field.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

I mean exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:21

Most like most stadium workers that you interact with, the ones who like show you where your seat is, those are those are volunteers. Like those people are not paid. They they volunteer for that so that they could go to the games for free, and because they love baseball, but those that's labor that should be paid. And and uh these stadium workers, they are seasonal workers, and so they are exploited too. And the and like these these catering companies, like they try to break their unions just as much as any boss tries to break any union. And yeah, um it's tough. These that's what the owners benefit from. They they benefit from being able to institutionally like do things like that, institutionally exploit the people that are working for them.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:02

Well, don't worry, because we give $200 to the Tanger Task Force anytime a brewer hits a double.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:08

That's great.

unknown 1:04:10

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:11

That's gonna do it. That's gonna do it. I think I think that's gonna solve all of the problems. I love those little like bespoke donations that teams do, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:19

Like me so mad.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:21

Yeah, anytime the Mets at a helm run, it's like a city, you know, anytime the apple goes up, they like make a donation to like school or something schools or something like that in the tri-state area.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:31

You can just fix it. I'm like, yeah, so literally that. You could just fix it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:35

Literally that I yeah, I get in arguments with you all the time where it's like, yeah, but these players be so much money, and like, you know, I you know, like you said, Lisa, like I'm moving paycheck to paycheck, or you know, our school is so underfunded and teachers have to pay out of pocket. And I'm like, if you really want to get into the conversation, like we could talk about a wealth tax, like we could fix all of these problems. I'm I'm fine with taxing the players more, I'm fine with taxing the owners more. I don't really care. I but I what I don't want, what I don't want is the players to make less money so that the owners can make more money. That is the worst possible scenario in my mind, and that's what a salary cap is.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:09

Exactly. Thank you for saying that loudly and clearly.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:14

Well, you're very welcome. Thank you for letting me come on to do that. I love to yell about this stuff, as I'm sure you can tell over the last hour or so. But it's always fun to talk to different people about it who are fans of different teams and have different experiences than me and Alex do.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:25

Yeah, we've really enjoyed having you on. And you are you are rooted for the brewers in the postseason, are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:31

I am great. I am, yes. Unironically, I am rooting for the brewers because I do think it would be the funniest thing to watch the owners trying to go into an off-season and be like, we must have a salary cap. Ignore the part where the people with the 19th highest payroll in the smallest market just won the World Series. Like that would be quite funny to watch them try to draw that line.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:47

We're here for a raised brewers October.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:51

I do think that would literally kill Rob Manfred. So be prepared for Marcata Nasser build the shoes a little bit sooner than we thought.

unknown 1:06:01

All right.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:02

Well, thank you again, Bobby, for having for coming on. And then can you just um let people know where they can find you and and Alex's work?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:10

Yeah, of course. Um it's tipping pitches wherever you get podcasts. We only have the one social media account. It's tipping underscore pitches on Twitter. I guess technically we also have an Instagram account, but we don't use it. Uh yeah, but you can listen to the show on any podcast app. We also have a Patreon where we do um, you know, bonus episodes, something called three up three down, where we do like three things that are bringing us joy, three things that are taking our joy away. In the week of baseball since the last time we did it. Uh, and that's also where we're hosting our series, The Audit, where we are taking a deep, deep, deep look into the publicly available financial information about the MLB teams that we can find. Things like how much public funding they've gotten for stadiums, things like their TV contracts, um, things like how much money they might get in revenue sharing and leaks that we've seen from those organizations, and really trying to examine the idea that it's not that profitable to own a baseball team, which is what they sell us a lot. So that's kind of everywhere that we're doing work. Um, thank you for having me. This was really fun. It was really nice to talk about some of this stuff with you all.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

Yeah, thank you. Well, that was that was nice. That was fun. Yeah, it was. Yeah, I like talking nerdy about baseball stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

I feel like that could have gone on for several more hours. Maybe we'll have to bring them on in another installment later on. Because we didn't we talked a little bit about the salary cap and the CBA, but like we haven't dug into any of the stuff that they've actually agreed upon or brought up or whatever. If they're following that, I'd love to dig into that with them at some point.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:38

Yeah, that's true. We need an update on because the CBA is happening right now, like they're at the table now. Yeah, so yeah, we'll have to have them back, but glad to hear that they're rooting for the brewers in the postseason. Yeah, definitely. How could you not everybody should be because here's what happened. We've clinched the postseason since we last saw.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

Woo! Yeah, we did the postseason and the division, and all we've got. I think we need one more win and we get that first round bye for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:06

Is that the magic number for the buy now?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:08

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:09

All right. Let's do it. Yeah, 98 wins, 98 wins so far. Franchise record. I was there. Got to see it. That's amazing. We'll talk about that series later with you there, right? Where do you want to start now?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:22

Well, uh, since we last talked, we had a very, very exciting sweep of the Cubs to close out the season series with them. Game two went to 10 innings. Garrett Mitchell caught that fly out, and then he threw a bullet to third base to get the runner. And then in the very next inning, Luis Lara hit the walk-off. My God.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:40

Yes. Oh, the prep talk. We didn't talk about the prep talk. You know how I'm always talking about how Pat Murphy wants his movie moment. I have talked about it so often. This was it. His prep talk for Luis Lara, and then Luis's smile after the prep talk before he was at bat was everything. And then I'm getting all verclamped.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:58

Dude, and before that in the game, Lara burned a challenge. And when he walked back to the dugout, Murph gave him a stare down. Like, and then to give him that opportunity to go up and hit and he like patted him right here and was like, I believe he's like, You got this? I got this. He's like, I believe in you.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:15

Like, uh-huh, oh my god. Oh my and the this Luis's smile after Murph was like, Are you ready? You got this, I believe in you. Was everything, and then was it first pitch? First pitch, dude. Shampoo Boom! I lost my mind. Yes. I oh man, and that it was against the Cubs was also amazing. Yes, and then also Churio had that bomb, and BA called it in the game. You know, he's like, BA was like, look at that swag. Look at he's gonna show us something.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:48

Amazing. That whole game was a movie moment. I just watched The Mighty Ducks with my kids the other night. Yes. We watched a whole movie, which I haven't seen in a long, long time. And at the very end, Emilio Esteves, who is like T Mu Michael J. Fox, by the way, tells the kid at the end of the game he's gotta do like a like a penalty shot to win the game or whatever. And he's he tells the kid, I believe in you. I looked at my daughter and I go, that's exactly what Pat Murphy said in the Louis Laura part before he hit that walk-off against the Cubs last week. Do you remember? And she was like, Yeah, I remember.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:22

It was amazing. You know, I I loved it so much. And to me, that moment is proof that movie moments can happen, yes. And that also that Murphy's actions there is like not only are men capable of being emotionally intelligent and tuned into like relationship dynamics, but it actually makes you better and everyone around them better when they are like emotionally intelligent and tuned into the dynamics of inter, intra, and interrelationships. I loved it. Yeah, I loved it so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

It was such a picture perfect moment of how great he is as a manager, too. I mean, what is he gonna win for the third year in a row? Manager of the year, he probably should. Yeah, it's because of shit like that. He knows, he knows how to reach Cooper Pratt, he knows how to reach Sal Freelig, he knows what he needs to do to reach Luis Laura. It's not the same thing for every player. He knows his players, he knows what motivates them, he knows what makes them better. He's not using some blanket, I'm gonna yell at everybody until they perform better. I'm gonna, you know what I mean? It's it's what makes him a phenomenal teacher and manager and coach and all of these things. And that's what they need, especially with a team as young as the Brewers. You know, we've been saying this for years, but that that's just seeing, you know, when Coop got benched like the week before, and then seeing this pep talk for Louis after he got the stare down for burning that challenge and then coming back and being like, hey, like you did that, but now you do this, right? It's just it's amazing to see that kind of stuff in action and really see like what a difference that kind of manager makes, like knowing your players, knowing what they need, knowing what to do. It's it's next level shit, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:57

It was so good. That was win 90, right? Yes, yeah, so good. You know what else I noticed during that game is I think it kind of solidified for me the difference in how the Cubs and the Brewers play the game. And I don't mean strategy-wise, but I mean like the Cubs love to win, that's true, and it feels it just feels like the brewers love to play. Yeah, they love playing the game of baseball. Turio loves those high pressure moments. William Contreras fucking loves baseball, you know? And like the Cubs love to win, yeah. They love to win baseball games, and maybe that's just me being sentimental or uh rewriting the narrative in my head, but I'm gonna stick with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:44

That's also how Emilio Esteves was at the beginning of the Mighty Ducks. He was this high-power lawyer who just wanted to win until you got a DUI and he had to go volunteer for these kids and learn how to love the game again. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:56

I have seen Mighty Ducks like so many times, dude. So many times. I tried to get my kids to watch it last year. Neither of them were into it, but I did love some Mighty Ducks. D2, uh D3, much better. I don't know. It's a good movie, though. It holds up, even though ducks don't fly in a V. Like, don't they? I don't think so. That's geese.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:27

Huh. And then we played the Reds. We had those couple of high-scoring games. The 20 to nothing shutout. Oh, yes. Second one we've done this year, first team to ever do that. Shutouts uh of 20 runs or more. Luis Lara again robbing that home run from Gino Suarez. I lost my fucking mind. How many times have you watched that?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:48

So good, so good. I watched it in slow motion. I use my finger to go back and forth and watch it in reverse. And then go forward. And then and then Garrett Mitchell behind him. Like immediate meme.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:03

Just magical. Just I mean, Luis Lara, I cannot say this enough times about him. This kid is gonna be a fucking superstar. The stuff that he's putting together now already is just mind-blowing to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:15

I love him.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:16

He's so great.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:17

He's so good. Oh, yeah, that was a great series. Yeah, another win. Mm-hmm. And then what did we do? Went to the Pirates. Went to the Pirates. We won that series. Yes. The Pirates series is where we clinched the division. Oh yeah. Did you watch the team watch the Cubs game? Because we clinched when the Cubs lost.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:38

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:39

Jeff Leverine and Tim Dillard were in the booth or like in the little section after, you know, wherever they were at MPNC. And they were watching the team in the locker room, and the team was watching a TV of the Cubs game because they're about to lose. So the team watched it, and then you know, they broke out into cheers. There was no audio, but then the lights at PNC Park went out. And so Leverine and Diller were just like in the dark. So they were they were like, oh, they shut the lights out on us, but then they kept working, like they kept running. That's cute. That's fun. It was just like um the ease with which they both just like worked that in and picked it up. Like, we have the I love being a Brewers fan. I love it. Yes, it's the best. Everything about it is just so great. Totally agree. We yeah, we're really spoiled. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:32

And then the Orioles, and you were at two of the Orioles games. Yeah, I went on Friday night with my daughter, and I went on Sunday, and Sunday was the 98th win. Nice. It was great. We had a really good time. All the fans there are very friendly people, so we talked to lots of nice people.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:48

And there are a lot of Brewers fans there because we could hear chants on the TV.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:52

Yeah. Well, the first game I sat in left field and I sat by what's called the birdbath. And I didn't know this was a thing because they don't show it on the Brewers broadcast, but I watched the Orioles broadcast on Saturday and like they cut to it all the time. It's like two sections, and there's a guy who like sprays water on them with a hose and they lead their whole chant section there, you know what I mean? So you can hear them. Let's go O's, let's go O's, like from back there. So we were right next to them, and there were like four Brewers fans in that section, but probably because we weren't supposed to be there. Um, but then the next night we were behind home plate, and it was there were a lot of people, you know, when you're by the visiting dub uh dugout, they're pretty loud, and it was awesome. I mean, I got to see Jackson Cherio hit, yeah, a three-run bomb, got to see Contreras hit a big home run. I mean, and then Garrett Mitchell, a couple of really great catches the other night. Uh Cooper Prag in two RBI, just like a lot of really good stuff. Yeah, Coop was busy. He had made so many plays in the infield and two RBIs, a stolen base. Like, it was great. It was a great, great game to watch. And McGill redeeming himself after blowing the save on Friday. So I'm talking really fast because I'm excited, but it was great. Camden Yards is very nice. The fans are very friendly, and I like it.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:03

That's great. Very excited about this season. It's just been wonderful. I I was reminded that Turio didn't even play like the first 30 some games. I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:14

I was reminded that same thing today when I was looking at numbers. I was like, oh, and imagine if he had played the first six weeks of the season where he would be at this point.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:24

And now now it's a tight race for postseason for some of these teams. Yeah, we need to we want to get into that. Yeah. Should we go into uh what's brewing? Yeah, let's do it. I'm having a hard time saying brewing lately. I don't know why. Brewing. The rural brewer. The roadger. The rural, the rural, the rural brewer. I don't know why I'm having such trouble with it. But what's brewing is brought to you by our friends at Broken Bat Brewery. If you are looking for a place to go watch a game in Milwaukee, Broken Bat Brewing is definitely where you should go. They have beer, really good beer, lots of it. They have a lot of baseball. It's always on. You'll be surrounded by other brewers fans, baseball fans, people who can enjoy the games with you. Stuff to do. They have whiffle ball, pinball, some claw machines, they got food, they got some hot dogs, they got bobbleheads, if you like bobbleheads, they got playing cards if you like playing cards, they got good vibes all around. They've cultivated a really nice experience over there for a baseball fan. So if you need to go watch a game, or even if you just want to go hang out somewhere, but you still need to be surrounded by baseball, that is definitely where you we think you should go. And a big thank you to Broken Bat for being fans of the Brewers Babes. Cheers. Cheers.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:51

Okay, the standings are blowing my mind. I just want to skip to the AL real quick. The AL Oak.

unknown 1:19:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:01

Is that okay with you? Yes. The only teams who have clinched the postseason are all in the AL East. The Rays, the Yankees, and the Red Sox. That is wild to me. And the other two divisions have not got a division leader yet. They're within the White Sox are within one game of the Guardians, and the Astros are within one game of the Rangers. So when we talk about how September baseball is the most exciting time because every game matters, the fact that we are six games out from the postseason and we still don't know exactly who is going to be playing on what day in what bracket at what time is mind-blowing to me. And then in the NL, you know, we've got the Brewers up top, the Dodgers, and then the Braves who clinched yesterday. And then the wildcard is still up in the air. Right now, it's the Cubs and the Padres who are tied, and then the Phillies one game behind them. I don't think, I mean, it would take like an act of God to get the the D backs in there, I think, at this point. But I'm watching so many games per day. And I'm I'm also trying to think about like what situation do we want? You know, I'm looking at what are the possibilities for our postseason bracket on the NL side, and where do I want everyone stacked up for the perfect scenario for us? And I'm wondering who do we want to face in all of these situations, the DS, the CS, and the World Series? Because it could be any of these teams.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:19

We cannot be talking about the World Series right now, Aaron. Cannot be doing that. Okay. No, the DS and the CS. Okay, let's see. I am sure that we could beat them, but I am done playing the Cubs in the postseason. Like just as a fan who goes to the games, I don't want my books stolen anymore. I don't, I don't want to deal with them.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:41

As it stands now, we would be facing the winner of a Cubs Padres series. Right. And then the Braves will be playing the Phillies. But again, that could change.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:53

Right. So it's gonna be seeds four and five play each other, and then the Braves play seed six, which is right now the Phillies. Yeah. One game back, though. One game back. But the Cubs have the tiebreaker on both the Padres and the Phillies. So they can't they won't be seeded sixth.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:10

Well, I don't want that either, because if the unless the Braves win, obviously, because if it ends up being Cubs versus Brewers in the NLCS, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:20

No, I just want them eliminated. Yes, yes. This is the dream. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:26

And I'm I'm trying, I'm like trying to wrap my brain around it now, too. I'm like, okay, like what does the bracket look like? Yeah. You know, if it ends up that the Braves play the Cubs in this wildcard series, and then the Cubs win, then it will be the Cubs versus the Dodgers in the division series, which means the CS would be either a Brewers Dodgers or Brewers Cubs, and I don't want either of those. You know what I'm saying? Right. I really don't want to play seven games against the fucking Cubs. Five was enough.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:57

Seven? Mm-mm. So what you're saying is you want to play the Padres. I think. Or the Phillies. Well, I think I want to see how they do against the Phillies in this upcoming week. I think they'd be fine, but like it's nice that we get a little a little preview. Although maybe that's that's like hit the brewers in the ass before too, because it psyches them out sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:17

When it's that I don't know what kind of math to root for against the Phillies coming up, you know. If they win games, they gotta lose we gotta lose to them. But we gotta stay up here so that we get uh so we get to keep our first round bye potentially and um home field advantage.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:33

Although I forget who it was, but somebody was trying to make the argument that home field advantage doesn't actually exist anymore. And like if you look at the postseason for the last three or four seasons, the home team loses more in the postseason than not.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:47

I do I think the format for home field advantage is fucking wrong. I think it's incorrect. Two two at home and then three on the road and then two more at home. Like if you lose one. Oh, for an LCS, yes, seven.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:01

In the World Series. Well, it used to be. Am I wrong that it used to be two, two, one, one, one? Did it? In my head it is, but my head is not a you know reliable place to be these days.

unknown 1:23:11

So maybe.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:12

But it does seem like that would make more sense because two, three, two sucked.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:20

You gotta win the first two. You gotta win the first two before you because if you get swept on the road, you have like the pressure to win the first two games is too high. I think. I don't know. I just I think it should be three days in a row at home should be a home that should be home field advantage. Just two broken up. I think it should be three, two, two. Yeah, that's what it should be. It should be three, two, two.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:43

You should be guaranteed to play more games. If it's a best of seven, then you're gonna need to play at least four games. You should be guaranteed to play at least three games at home. Agree. Is what you're saying. Like there's no guarantee that it goes to seven. There's a guarantee that it goes to four, so the first three games should be at home.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:00

Yeah, I think it should be three, two, two. So though the visiting team only gets two games, but fuck you, win more games in the regular season, and then you can do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:11

I don't know. Next season we're gonna be like two seed, we're gonna be making the exact opposite argument. Why is it already stacked against the first seed? They already have it. I don't know. I just it doesn't feel right to me to you're right. The math is a little tricky if I have to think about it, but maybe three three one. Three-three-one, maybe. Yeah. Because it's weird to go play two games anyway. Yeah, and also game seven is on Halloween, which I think is dumb. I want to reserve Halloween for Halloween because we're a Halloween family. Like we go, you know, we do the things, we do, we I make all the costumes, we do all the fucking triggerings. Man, you make some costumes. Yeah, we go out, and I am going to be watching game seven of the world series instead of creating cherished memories with my children.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:05

They might be cherished memories, they might be the most cherished of memories. Think about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:11

Do you know what my son wants to be for Halloween? He wants to be an egg. I love making our Halloween costumes, and my goal every Halloween is just to make Jamie look as ridiculous as possible in like whatever family costume we have.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:25

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:25

You know, so you've seen these pictures, right? They get more and more absurd. Like one year we were all like big cats. I was like a jaguar, uh, my daughter was a cheetah or whatever, and then Jamie was a gazelle. Oh yeah. I put him in like these tight ass pants and made him little like spiral things and did his face all weird. He's a trooper about it, but it's getting absurd, and so I'm trying to think what he can be this year because my son wants to be an egg. He also likes to be carried still, and so I'm gonna make Jamie like a nest, and he's gonna be like a mother bird, and there's gonna be like a big old nest around his waist. I get some like chicken wire and then like throw some hay in there. It's gonna be absurd. But I'm not gonna do that for Halloween if we're gonna be at game seven instead, is what I'm saying. Anyway, they just shouldn't do it on Halloween.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:15

My kid one year wanted to be a tree. I was like, all right, I'll figure that out. Are you sure? You sure yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:29

Why are they doing this? But the point is that we're uh we're a Halloween family. We like it, we get all out for it. We're that annoying family on the block. So it's just I'm like, oh, game seven on Halloween night, which is a Saturday. Okay, I'll sacrifice Halloween for you if you're there, Melissa. Right, I'll do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:49

All right, so who do you want to face in these series, or do you not want to talk about it?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:53

I will talk about the NLDS, and I think for me, I think it's the Padres. The thing is, all of these teams are just kind of running on a hot streak right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:03

That's true.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:03

I mean, the Cubs are without Alex Bregman, so maybe that they we might actually have like the best chance against them right now if you just go on like how hot they are at the streaks alone. But Padres just had like their fifth win in a row. I just want the Brewers to focus on playing the kind of ball that they play, I think. And I don't want my scorebook to get stolen anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:28

How hard I cried at the end of game five last year, partially out of happiness, but also out of just like relief, stress being gone from my body after enduring a five-game cup series. It's just it's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:43

Which of these teams do you think has the best chance to beat LA?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:48

I don't know. At least they're kind of banged up, aren't they? But they've been winning games, they won four in a row. They've they keep winning.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:54

They're not really banged up, they're doing really well. Mookie Best was four for four the other night. They have some of their pitchers on the IL, but they also have like a starting rotation of 8,000 pitches. That's true, you're right. They do have a million. So we don't be fine. They'll be fine. But they've been playing really good baseball. And like the last I mean, I watched the series against the Giants, and it was the Giants, so maybe that has something to do with it. But when I was watching them, I was just like, damn, they're really have their A game on right now. So I guess whatever team can beat the Dodgers is the team that I want to play the Braves. I guess I think maybe the Braves could be the Dodgers. I don't know. I'm wondering that.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:35

I'd like a Brewer's Braves series. That'd be cool to watch.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:39

Yeah, bring uh Brent Suder back. Did you see us dance?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:41

Yes, I did see it. Of course I thought it. That's the one thing I've been seeing. I'm always up on Brent Suter. You asked me about like 10 other things. I'm like, no, I didn't see that. I didn't see that. Well, did you see what Brent Souter did? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:53

Yeah. What about the Ale? Do you have any thoughts on who you want to advance in the Ale?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:59

I was like really rooting for the White Sox just because I feel like they were so awful the last two years. So this was like such a fun thing to watch happen. And I like the White Sox. So I think that would be more fun than watching the Yankees. Um the Red Sox, though, too, man. Some socks. Give me some socks.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:18

Oh, the the Red Sox are fun. I would be seeing Caleb Durbin and Andrew Monasterio, that'd be tough. But then also the Rays now. They have Freddie. We were talking about that a little bit. We have to go against Freddy. I don't know. I like and I always I like the Guardians. I like them very much. I really like Steven. Yeah, I remember you were up on them last year. Yeah. Maybe the year before. I I always have liked them. So I guess I would be rooting for the Guardians or I mean Tampa Bay, yeah. I don't want the Yankees and I don't want the Rangers. That's what I know. But that Sox Guardian series that was last week, that was a really good series to watch. There's like neck and neck. And so if the Sox beat the Rangers, if they play the Rangers and end up playing the Guardians in the ALDS, it's gonna be a really good series. Good baseball. It's gonna be great baseball. Yeah. All right. Uh well, before we uh guess too much about what's gonna happen in the postseason, let's move on to our fielder's choice segment. This is when we both pick a non-Milwaukee player that we are digging this week and talk about why and Aaron you're first this week.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:26

My fielder's choice this week is Padre's right fielder, Fernando Tatis Jr. I don't know if Tatis has ever been a Brewers Babe's fielder's choice yet, but if not, I feel like this is long overdue.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:39

Yeah, has he? We'd have to go back in the archives.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:42

Yeah, I mean, he he's having a hell of a year at the plate. His overall average this year is 285, 297 since June 1st, which is when his season really turned around. He's hitting the ball, he's hitting it hard. He's got 24 home runs on the season, and his bat speed, exit velo, and hard hit percentage are all in the 90th percentile or higher. He, for context, he only hit one home run for the first two months of the whole season. So he's hit 24 total, but he didn't start hitting them until June 1st. So add all of that to his speed, his arm strength, his fielding range, um, and then these flashy clutch moments like robbing Francisco Lindo over Grand Slam last month. He's just such a superstar player. He plays with so much heart and passion. He's just really fun and exciting to watch. And then, of course, the aesthetics go without saying. I mean, he's very, very, very nice to look at, especially in the pinstripe pants. And, you know, you love a pinstripe. I know it really frames the peach.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:40

I really like your hand moment there. We'll put this little segment on YouTube so you can see what she did.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:48

I gotta I gotta do it. He's so lovely. And uh we haven't named him before. That's I don't think we have. Well, he deserves it.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:55

Yeah, great choice. I love him. I'm glad his season bounced back. Yeah. We're getting really worried there, but I really like I like him a lot. Me too. That's the that's the jersey I have for my my City Connect San Diego jersey, the Tatish jersey, because those are cooking that.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:10

Those jerseys are fun as hell, too. The colorful ones with all the pink jerseys on them. Yeah, those are cool. Yeah, the old ones. Love it. Good choice.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:16

Who wins your fielder's choice this week? Uh well, speaking of the Guardians, my fielder's choice this week is the Cleveland lefty starter Parker Mesick, aka the guy that everyone would be talking about for AL Cy Young if Cam Schlitler didn't exist. And Parker Mesick, I think, still has a good shot, a decent shot of getting rookie of the year votes. He'll definitely get votes for sure. He's a big reason the Guardians are not only in the division race, but might actually take it away from the Sox, like we just talked about. He has a good pitch arsenal. He's especially got a good four-seamer. It's really killing people this year. Batters against the four-seamer at a 161 average and a 35% strikeout rate. And according to StatCast, Mesix Heater is the second most valuable pitch in the MLB. Just behind Jacob Mizrowski's four-seamer. So he's doing good. He's got a he's got a war of almost six, he's got an ERA of 2.5. And earlier this month, he passed CeCe Sabathia's record for the second most strikeouts by a Cleveland rookie. Oh, wow. Yeah, he's now got 186 under his belt. So he's doing really good. Stephen Voat is going around like trying to make the case for him for rookie of the year. And as I mentioned before, I love Stephen Vote. I am a firm believer that we would all be better if we just did what he told us to do. So Parker gets my fielder's choice this week. Nice. That's exciting. Yeah. Cool. Love it. We'll see him. We'll see him in the post.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:45

All right, let's move on now to our sausage race winners this weekend. This is when we each pick a brewer's player that we're digging right now. And Lisa, it's your turn to go first.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:54

I had a couple choices, but I went with Cooper Pratt this week. Um, I think you talked about before how Murph had benched him and what that had done for him. And I think just the way that Cooper has responded to the pressure and the expectations on him has been a model case for how you want your rookies to be. Then the 20 games that Cooper has played since Murph sat him down, he's batting 333 with an 811 OPS. He's got 17 stolen bases and 69 games, which puts him on par with 40 stolen bases for the season. And I know you were at the game yesterday, so you probably didn't get to see it yet, but his post-game interview after the Orioles series, did you did you see it at all? I saw little pieces of it. It was it was like really special. You see how genuine he is? He's just like, he's so sincere and genuine, and I love that for him. He's like, How is this team doing? And he's just like, it's these guys, it's a good clubhouse. We all buy in, everybody knows their role. There's no I and team. There's no I and team, Mazill. Oh yeah. There's a lot that goes unnoticed. We we don't give up games, we listen to Murph. Like they he said they do a good job of teaching us the right way to do it. And I'm like, yes, that willingness to be humble and to be coachable and to learn makes him a better player, but it uh has also allowed us to have so much more flexibility in the field. I'm thinking about a Cooper Pratt with a huge ego, how that would change the dynamics. And I think it means Joey O doesn't play third as much, right? Because Joey's at shortstop more than, and we know what that means to a team like this, that Joey O can be at third. And so just like those little pieces that he's able to bring to this team just by like being humble, willing to learn, willing to grow, and not letting it get to him. It just he seems to have really taken it here. I love it. He's got his little bestie, Lara, like here with him. I just I I'm really excited. I cannot wait to see what what this guy does in the next decade.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:45

Yeah, awesome choice. He was I had a list, uh, you know, a short list of contenders this week, too, and he was there. Maybe just because it's fresh in my mind, but man, he was so good last night. Yeah, I mean, like I said, he was real busy. We turned a lot of plays in the infield, and then what two singles, two RBIs, stolen base, just doing it, man, grinding. Yeah, so awesome. Got it. Who wins your sausage race? My sausage race winner this week is Jackson Cherio, who coincidentally has the exact same batting average and home runs on the season as Tatis. I learned today when I was looking at the show. Really? Yeah, isn't that funny? 285 and 24 home runs. Uh, but like we said earlier, remember he missed the first six weeks of the regular season. So um imagine how many more home runs he could have. In September, he's hitting 309 with four home runs. Last night in Baltimore, he made history when he stole his second base in the sixth inning, becoming just the third player in history to have a 2020 season in each of his first three seasons in the majors, the other two being Julio Rodriguez and Bobby Witt Jr. Like, who doesn't love those guys? What a fun club to be in, you know. Let's go. And uh he's the first player to do it before turning 23 years old. So that's pretty cool. We've seen Churio improve at the plate all season long. We saw him get that clutch home run in the Cub Series that we were talking about, uh big hit um in game one and the win over Baltimore on Friday. And his defense has been really great. The the other thing was about the cub series in game one, it ended on like a Churio catch and a Lara catch that were both really, really awesome. And then the next night they got up and hit the home run and the walk-off. I was like, these two guys, like, let's go. So I saw him uh when I was sitting out in left field, I saw him make some really exciting catches and stuff. So it's just like it's been really, really great last few weeks in particular. He's still growing into his potential and as good as he's playing right now. Like he's gonna be even more incredible as time goes on. So I think he's been great lately. I'm looking, I'm so looking forward to watching that happen. Like you just said about Cooper Pratt. Watching him grow into a more mature player is just gonna be joyful.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:50

Oh, this team is gonna be they're already so much fun. They're gonna be so good. Yes, so good. I love it so much. Really, really good choice. I also I heard that he's still younger than all of the rookie of the year contenders. Yes, he is. That's wild. Yeah, that's wild. I love I love his I love how he's like a vet and a and a rookie at the same time almost. You know what I mean? Yeah, like the way Lara looks up to him, like, oh dude, this is this is a team. Yeah, I love it. Good choice.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:22

Well, this has been a long one, so let's get into next week's lineup. The Brewers have uh two more regular season series left to play, one in Philadelphia and then back home to host the St. Louis Cardinals, and then we're on to the postseason. But there's still a lot that could determine what that looks like over the next couple weeks. So it's gonna be a really exciting final week of regular season ball.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:40

Yeah. And this is probably our last episode before the postseason. So we will see you all in the postseason. And until then, you can find us in between episodes on Twitter and Blue Sky at Brewers Babes and on Instagram at Brewers Brewers underscore babes. Uh and if you can leave us a review wherever you listen to us and share our show with a friend who loves the brewers and baseball as much as we do, we would love that. So, like I said, we'll be back in the postseason. And until then, bye babes. Bye babes.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:16

I had one in the lobby with the hooks go down the street. Tell everyone that you're chilling like a filler. I kept it in my filler. I just want to show you why.