Effectively Wild Episode 1616: MLB’s Other Cheating Problem

November 14, 2020

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Marlins hiring Kim Ng and the significance of Ng becoming MLB’s first woman GM, the Angels hiring Perry Minasian and the team’s ownership issues, Kyuji Fujikawa and an NPB unwritten rule, Ryan Tepera’s accidental MVP vote, and how FanGraphs readers feel about 2020’s new rules, plus a Stat Blast about Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, and the most prolific putout tandems in MLB history. Then (43:30) they talk to The Athletic’s Eno Sarris and former MLB pitcher David Aardsma about MLB’s problem with pitchers using banned foreign substances, touching on how foreign substances help, how prevalent they are, Aardsma’s personal experience with foreign substances, how players learn to use them, whether getting a better grip really helps hitters’ safety, Trevor Bauer’s possibly substance-enhanced Cy Young award, whether sticky stuff will be baseball’s next big scandal, what MLB can do to address its widespread rule-breaking behavior, the future of player development, and more.