Reinventing America’s Favorite Pastime

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1:05Congratulations! You made the Varsity Podcast. My name is John O 'Rain, and I am Puck's sports correspondent and host of this pod. And today, Jeff Passan joins the pod. Jeff is one of my favorite guests. He's a senior MLB insider for ESPN, and he knows everything about what's going on with baseball. We're really going to nerd out on this one. But before we get to Jeff, today is Wednesday, April 1st, and here's what I'm watching. I've been negative on college basketball for the past couple of seasons. In my mind, the transfer portal has made it difficult for fans to really support their teams. You never know who's staying, who's going.

1:43Well, this year's NCAA tournament has been a lot of fun to watch. And part of the reason is that sports blue blood schools, you know, Michigan, UConn, Arizona, Duke, they've all played meaningful games. Fans of small Cinderella schools, they don't want to hear this, but business is better when the favorites win, judging by TV ratings, sponsorships, ticket sales, you name it. Well, three weeks ago, at the start of the NCAA tournament, CBS Sports President David Burson said that the tournament will stay a crown jewel even without as many Cinderella's. That's because it's unpredictable. There are still plenty of upsets and a ton of last-second shots, and ultimately, that's what really drives ratings.

2:27Okay, now let's get to Jeff Passan. Jeff Passan, always great to have you on. And I have to tell you, we're one week into the baseball season, and the Robot Ops, I love him. And I think baseball fans do, too. You had a great tweet where you were talking about the roar of the crowd being bigger after a call is overturned than it is sometimes for a home run. First question to you is the robot arms, have they been as successful as you were expecting, more, less? Where are you right now in terms of them one week into the regular season? three years ago john i went to charlotte north carolina for a few days and i was working on a couple of different stories liam hendricks was there with the chicago white socks at their triple a affiliate and triple a was running an experiment that year where half the days of the week they were going to have the abs challenge system in place and the other half of the days the other three days that they played games, they had full-blown, every call is made by the robot umpires.

3:39And what Major League Baseball was doing was essentially A-B testing, like which of these systems that we could potentially implement eventually in Major League Baseball is going to be the preferred one. And the majority of guys who I spoke with that week and the majority of people at MLB seem to be leaning toward ABS Challenge just because the response to it and And the interactivity of it, with it being up on the jumbotron as quickly as it is and as seamlessly as it is, they thought the league did that this was going to be a new element that gets introduced, that gets fans engaged. And they were right.

4:20Like, I think it has been a smashing success so far. And you're always going to have your people, the baseball purists who say this is not a game that's governed by technology, that this is not a game that runs on a clock, that all the innovations that have come over the last couple of years in Major League Baseball don't fit with their idea of what baseball is. they do fit with what a lot of casual fans want and with what a lot of diehard fans, frankly, want, too. And I think the wave that Major League Baseball is riding right now is due in part to these innovations that have been successfully implemented and that have been thought out really carefully over the years.

5:04And I give the league and I give the players especially for their willingness to acquiesce to these rules that because the collective bargaining agreement gives full control of them to the owners, that players really don't have a lot of say in. You know, they could be complaining about it. They could be talking about how this system is screwing up everything. But they're not because I think they, too, see that this is another positive thing for baseball and a real driving force behind a lot of the momentum going on right now. OK, we can't be too positive about this, Jeff. Come on, man. Yeah. Like what?

5:43John, I'm going to be positive about things that deserve it. And ABS kind of kicks ass. Like it's just one of those things that all of the elements of the actual challenge itself are going about as well as you can have. And we're going to have a moment that makes us question this. There is going to be a moment somewhere. I don't know if it's early in the season. I don't know if it's later. I don't know if it's in the playoffs. There's going to be a moment that forces us to ask the question. Well, if we can get the calls right when players are challenging them, why wouldn't we just get the calls right all the time?

6:27And that's a it's a really fair and logical point. And I don't have a great answer to counter it. So I get why there are people out there who say if there's technology to do this the right way, then let's do it the right way entirely. But as far as the early rollout goes, I don't know if you can be anything but positive. Like that tweet that you were talking about was after Eugenio Suarez challenged back to back pitches from CB Buckner and both of them got overturned and prevented strikeouts. That's adding a really cool, high leverage, interesting, strategic moment to the game that simply did not exist beforehand.

7:08And if you can do that in a way that seems relatively painless, it's just a big win, I think, for the game altogether. Yeah. And on Sunday, I'm an Orioles fan watching the game on Sunday. And in the ninth inning, the same batter, the same at bat, there were two Orioles challenge two pitch strikes or two pitches, one on both. And I have to tell you, as a fan, that feeling of elation was it was bizarre. It's like, yeah, what was it? It was like Eddie Murray hitting a home run back in the day. It was it really was cool. Are there red flags right now, though? I mean, what is something that baseball should be concerned about with this?

7:51I think the concern is that this is being treated in terms of the tiny little distances that you see up there. less than point one of an inch, for example, when the margin of error in the system is greater than that. So I think that the only like real flaw of this is we're treating it or at least the league is treating it like these calls are infallible. When in reality, if you look at the margin of error being a sixth of an inch and if you look at the confidence intervals that the league themselves have said that we are 95 % confident that it's going to be right, at around point four inches and that we're 99 % confident that it's going to be right at half an inch.

8:38Well, a lot of the pitches that are being challenged fall within those bars. So is what we're seeing actually as correct as we're being told that it is? I think there's a point when you have technology, John, where you just have to either accept what you are being given and acknowledge that it's going to be the same for everyone. And so the baseline level of fairness there, because it's spread out over all of these games, is equally distributed. But if you want to be pedantic about it, if you want to actually be mathematical about it, yeah, it's not ideal. It's not great. It's not perfect. And when we're looking at rule changes, the question I think that leagues always have to ask themselves is, are we going to let perfect be the enemy of good?

9:27because right now the ABS system, what it's got, it's pretty darn good. I want to take you back to Charlotte, when you went down to Charlotte. When they had the ABS for the entire game, I'm imagining like a four-hour game, Jeff. How long did those games take? Oh, here's the thing, John. When I say they had ABS, I mean that the umpires had earpieces in. And after a ball crossed the plate, almost immediately, it would say either strike or ball. So it's not like there were challenge after challenge after challenge after challenge. These were just black and white calls that were being made by the computer.

10:12So the game actually breezed by. This was not something that it was like again and again and again, you have to pause and stop the game. And that's part of why the two challenge rule I like. There are going to be challenges. And if the umpire zone is a little bit off, there are probably going to be a few more than MLB would like just in terms of keeping the pace of play going. But I think challenges have become so quickly a part of the game right now and that there's enough intrigue in them and enough mystery in them where it's almost TikTok-like, right? Our attention spans have been shortened to the point where if something dramatic is happening and it doesn't unfold within 15 seconds, we get twitchy.

11:01Well, guess what? You're going to know the result of a challenge within 15 seconds. Your dopamine hit that you're waiting for and that you're hoping is going to be on your side. It's right there for you. You are an addict. That's totally what it is. And your fix is right around the corner and you don't have to be patient for it. And you don't have to sit around and, you know, think about all the different possibilities. No, it's it's right there. It's coming. And you're either going to feel like you got punched in the gut or you're going to feel that John Orr and elation where if you win that challenge, it feels like you've you've scored a run.

11:41I mean, it's wild how just that little moment right there, Major League Baseball has done an amazing job of integrating it into the game relatively seamlessly and making it feel like a part of being a baseball fan right now, as quickly as it has. You know what I have to say my favorite part of all this is? The Athletic actually had a story earlier this week about because of the ABS system, they had to get extremely accurate height and weight of the players. and apparently they lost like 100 feet of height collectively for the place. Some players went down three inches. That would be like me saying I'm 6 '1".

12:30I'm like, who are these people? I've just found that to be so funny. As somebody who has, in his past, when he was a little less secure, wanted to not not I'm not going to say I exaggerated my height here's what I will say when I was asked how tall I was I would say five nine and a half and I think at one point it was probably closer to five nine like and a quarter maybe so I might have given myself a quarter inch but the whole idea was well we're taught when it's a half you round up so you're rounding up Yes. Then I got hit by a tree. After that happened, honest to God, when I had my injury and broke my back, I had a compression fracture.

13:23And when doctors told me that I'm going to lose about a half an inch on my height permanently, I mean, I was crestfallen, John. That was the worst part of the rehab easy the pain that's what drugs are for but losing a half inch like that right there for somebody who doesn't have a whole lot of height to begin with was a moment of pure terror and so to be one of these players knowing deep down what you're listed as does not reflect the real height and that someday your secret might just be exposed i feel bad for those guys especially the ones who lost empathy that's like bow nailer going from six foot to five nine is more emasculating than a golden sombrero in back-to-back games like that right there is just painful but you know what uh truth catches up to all of us at some point john and with baseball player heights uh that day of of doom and reckoning is finally here You know what, Jeff, that was beautiful.

14:30You just displayed some empathy. I wasn't expecting that answer. Thanks a ton. Let's take a quick break. I want to come back. I want to talk about just baseball's rule changes just in general. And they've done such a good job, in my opinion, over the past five, six years.

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15:07Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B-plus life? It's so dangerous to live that, more dangerous than a B-minus or a C-plus life, because when you're living a B or B-plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Suzy Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.

15:41All right. So in the past couple of years, we have the pitch clock, which to me has it's been great. It took games from I mean, those Red Sox Yankee games that went over four hours and when they were being played in like April and May, you know, and now everything is pretty much between two and two and a half hours. It's it's you know, it's a lot more fun to watch. You know, the bigger bases, which I don't know if we've seen more stealing attempts. I think we have, but it's just kind of a everything seems to work well. The one that gets the most complaints among my friends, at least, is the extra innings with the rule of the runner on set, what the runner starting on second, which, again, I don't mind.

16:25I don't need to see an 18 inning game in April. You know, so that doesn't bug me as much. um why is it the the thing about baseball is that it is so traditionally it's been so difficult to make any kind of changes whatsoever uh to the sport and now they're coming out they're introducing a clock they've they've introducing they've already introduced a clock in the baseball they're bringing out the robot umps in the baseball they're just how is it that baseball has been able to force these things through and i say baseball really it's rob manfred who also gets a a short shrift on this but he's been really at the forefront of of making these changes to baseball um how have they been able to do that process and and process when you look at business organizations and the way that they go about essentially making their product most appealing to consumers is something that sports, frankly, has struggled with over time.

17:32It's not been as much of a process-oriented business as your traditional business. And yet Major League Baseball has a real gift, John, and that gift is the minor leagues. Because what MLB can do, just as they did with that A-B testing in Charlotte, it, they can essentially look at each of their levels that they have, low A, high A, double A and triple A, and unleash whatever spate of rules changes that they want to test them out, to collect data, to analyze that data and to understand what the consequences and potentially unintended consequences of these ideas that they have are. and minor league players are are they kind of crash test dummies yeah yeah they are a little bit and is that fair to the players who are trying to ascend to the big leagues and carve out careers to uh have to percent potentially change their approaches or or change the game altogether because mlb wants to get data no it's not all that fair to them that's the reality of the situation And it's a testing ground that no other sport really has.

18:47The NBA could theoretically do things in the G League, but the number of games there and the number of teams pales in comparison to the 120 minor league teams that exist in the four levels there. The NFL, nothing like that. The NHL doesn't have control over the minor leagues in the same way that Major League Baseball does. So I think having all of that data has allowed them to come to the big leagues with a ready-to-go product that they have a decent sense of how fans and players are going to react to it. And I think being patient, like ABS, John, could have been introduced to Major League Baseball years ago.

19:29The pitch clock could have been introduced years ago. But the slow rolling of this and trying to take that process-oriented approach, I think, really has benefited MLB. Because the seamlessness with which they've integrated these rule changes into the game and gotten buy-in from fans is incredible, frankly. Like if you're taking something as steeped in tradition as Major League Baseball and in many ways turning it on its head, doing the sorts of things that past generations would have seen as breaches of trust, you have to do so in a very, very careful fashion. And I respect the patience that MLB has had to do this right.

20:14And frankly, to do it in a way that they don't have to overreact if the reaction from fans is not what they were looking for and like make a snap change. No, they pretty much know how this is going to go. And it's gone quite well. Are there any other rules that are popping around the minor leagues right now that baseball is testing, to your knowledge? Yeah, there's a whole spate of them. And there are some wild ones in there, which I frankly am not a fan of. You know, the number of disengagements, for example. So throws over to first base, you know, at one level, they're going from two down to one.

21:00mound visits they're they're like getting rid of at at a level all of this I think is in response to fears that the players are going to be so good at challenging that it's going to add additional time to the game and I think of all the rule changes that MLB has made the one that it holds dearest is the pitch clock and and i understand why because i baseball had a boring problem not to me and you because we love the game and because we've been watching it for our whole lives and because we have an affinity for it i could watch baseball for 10 straight hours and still be engaged with every single pitch that's going on but uh baseball's reputation had taken a real hit over time.

21:51And what the pitch clock has done is it's not just addressed those concerns, but it's alleviated them. And so if that is what has brought so many of the casual fans back in or allowed people to develop interest in the game right now, that's the rule that you need to protect. And that's the rule that you need to service before all others. And so I think the reason that some of these rules that they have the minor league going on right now that players really just do not like is because maybe one of them works and that's all you need if you have 10 rules that you're trying out and one of them you feel like you can bring to the big leagues and it can help you shave off some of that time that the challenges are adding right now that's something that they're going to look into and and something that frankly just in terms of backup plans is is smart to do uh players just don't like it Although I will tell you, I spent last Saturday in the Truist Lounge, the new lounge in Camden Yards, which is, you know, very, very sweet, sweet.

22:54Fancy guy. I know. It's very fancy for that. You had a TV show. Now you're a sweet guy. I'm still a man of the people, Jeff. I still am. But in some respects, you know, the baseball is doing so many things. Like the game was over. I was like, I'm not ready to leave yet. I think the quick game times are great for people sitting at home and watching on TV. But if you're investing in going to the park, sometimes it's like, I just got here. At least give me another half hour for it. So anything that adds a little bit of time on the edges is probably not a bad – you don't want an hour and a half games in baseball, for goodness sakes.

23:37I wouldn't mind an hour and a half game because here's the thing. we got 162 of a man like that. No, really, though, I think that's an important point, John, because I think being a baseball fan is the sort of investment of time that no other sport comes close to matching. You have 30 minute pregame show every day. You have between 2.15 and 2.45 watching the game. You have 30 minutes postgame. You're talking about carving out one eighth plus of your day. And if we're looking at time awake, we're looking at more like a fifth of your day every day, essentially for six months. That is an enormous investment to ask of a fan.

24:25And it's why I think baseball fans are the most valuable out there beyond the NFL. Just I get that the NFL is its own Goliath and just on a different plane than every other professional sport right now. But if you're a baseball fan, the amount of actual engagement you're making with that team on a daily basis is far greater than any NBA team, NHL team, college football, any other sport out there, WNBA. I mean, whatever it is, like being a baseball fan, it takes a lot. So if you're asking a lot of fans, you need to give them something back. And I think that's what the rule changes are, John. It's not necessarily trying to make baseball better.

25:10It's trying to make it more palatable to the people that you're asking to invest their time, which is far and away the most valuable thing that we have in their product. Last week, baseball started a new era. Netflix carried its first game, producing carried its first game. Did you watch? Of course. Absolutely. What did you think? You're a cable TV guy. You grew up with broadcast TV. What do you think of Netflix's presentation? Speaking of the same. Yeah, I am perfectly okay with the idea that streaming services are here and they are part of our lives now. I hate the fact that baseball fans feel like they don't know where games are being broadcast and televised.

26:05And when it's tough because Major League Baseball, what are they trying to do? They're trying to get every dollar that they can out of television. And I get that instinct. And I also get that in three years when the national rights expire, you know the way that this business works. every streamer and every network is going to want the championship games, right? Like that is far and away the most valuable thing that major league baseball has is the world series. And, and now this is, this is wild to say, uh, the championship games, the WBC too, like MLB, if we're talking about another thing that, that the league and the players have done well, and, and this was, you know, this was an idea that had been percolating for a long time.

26:51Like how do we internationalize game in a compelling way. They have created from scratch a made-for-TV juggernaut. When you look at the ratings, when you look at the fact that Netflix in Japan paid$100 million, John, for WBC rights, MLB making that out of scratch and germinating it and watering it very delicately and watching over 20 years this thing turn into something, I think that shows a real power that the league and the players have right now to have done what, you know, I think the NHL to some extent did with the Four Nations, what the NBA is trying to do with the midseason tournament. MLB did it, and they did it in a very successful fashion.

27:42It took time, it took patience, but they got there. And the Netflix is of the world and the Amazons of the world and the Apples of the world. And of course, the ESPNs and the NBCs and ABCs and Foxes like baseball rights are going to go for a lot of money. I feel like the game, as long as labor does not get in the way, the game is in a position to cash in in a fashion that two or three years ago, I couldn't have conceived, frankly. It is incredible to look at, and especially you look at the World Series ratings, you look at the playoff ratings, and then you brought up the WBC, the World Baseball Classic, which I'm blown away at how popular that was.

28:31I had a story about I was in New York with a source and we went to a bar and the Knicks were playing. I think they were playing the Pacers. And that was a blowout game. And right at eight o 'clock, all the TVs behind the bar changed to the World Baseball Classic, the championship game. I was like in New York. And nobody complained. It was it was crazy. I do know that the World Baseball Classic is now pretty much every three years. um the uh fox would love to have it every two years they'd love to do it every year if yeah if they could um what changes do you see uh moving forward with do you think we could have it more frequently do you think it could possibly move i don't i don't know how it could move to the middle of the season but um these are all things that seem to be on the table i don't think it should be more than every free year uh three years i i abide uh by the the frequency principle um and and or rather excuse me the uh the scarcity principle rather and uh if you have this every year i'm sorry it just takes the frequency principle there yes yes boy i don't know how to talk it's a it's a shame i have this job um yeah tell me what do you do for living if if you have it too often the the beauty and the allure of it just goes away and i think the next one's going to come in four years actually because we are going to have the 2028 olympics and i do think at the end of the day uh mlb and the players association are going to come to a deal to get professional players in the olympics i think it is a no-brainer and a huge win for both sides if they can do that and i understand that you know the olympic tournament is going to be a little different.

30:21There are going to be only six teams in there. But we know that the United States is going to be there, that the Dominican Republic is going to be there, that Venezuela is going to be there. And as long as Japan is there as well, like if there were a four nations baseball tournament, it would be Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Japan, and Team USA. And so I... But, you know, I have to tell you, Jeff, like if I were a baseball owner, why am I allowing our players in the middle of the season And to benefit the IOC, what benefit are we getting back for the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox or the Baltimore Orioles?

30:58I would have to be, it would be really hard to convince me if I owned a Major League Baseball team. I can understand the players wanting to do it. I can actually kind of understand maybe Rob Manford wanting to do it as well. But I got to shut down my game for, what, two weeks, my season for two weeks and allow my guys to go and possibly get injured and play for the IOC? Like, no, no, thank you. I fully understand your perspective here, John, but I feel like what you're saying actually is a great microcosm for the approach that owners are either going to or not going to take on the labor front.