The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 48 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
MLB contradicted its ethical stance by rushing Steve Cohen's ownership approval
“Baseball having just gotten through this huge ethical scandal. We've cleaned up the game. We've kicked Jeff Luno out for a year. We've kicked the manager out. We really care about ethics. And then they turn around and they rush through the approval process. A …”
Carlos Beltrán and Alex Cora led the Astros' sign-stealing scheme
“There was this specific makeup of the Astros clubhouse, in which one veteran in particular, one coach in particular, Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora, had a lot of influence in there. And in most ways, that influence was exerted in really positive ways, as far as …”
Sports team equity appreciation accrues entirely and tax-free to franchise owners
“Sports teams like never go down in valuation and people never want to sell them. So The entirety of that valuation goes to the owner. That's not shared with anybody else who helped create the wealth. Like players don't get stock or equity in the franchises the…”
Houston Astros remain a model for the pitfalls of high-performing organizations
“I would argue that the Astros remain a model organization. Right? An organization that we can learn from. But now we can learn a lot of different things, besides how to turn the laughing stock of sports into a champion in a few short years. We can learn about …”
MLB's investigation report explicitly absolved Houston Astros owner Jim Crane
“The commissioner, in the very first paragraph, actually, which stuck out like a red thumb to me, the very first paragraph of this nine-page report completely absolved the owner of the team, Jim Crane, from any responsibility or accountability whatsoever.”
MLB investigators could not prove GM Jeff Luhnow knew of cheating
“Major League Baseball, as I said, did an extensive investigation into this. Even they couldn't prove that Jeff Luno knew. You know, they looked at tens of thousands of emails and texts and They interviewed, like, dozens and dozens of witnesses, many of whom pr…”
Electronic sign stealing in MLB was not limited to the Astros
“Sign stealing was not at all limited to the Astros, right? Nobody believes they're the only team doing it. They might've been pushing it farther than anybody else, but they weren't alone.”
MLB commissioner acts as an executive beholden to team owners
“A lot of people think of the commissioner as this almost like judge like figure presiding over the game, looking out for the good of the sport above all else, like a steward. That's not what he is. I mean, Rob Manfred has even described himself as almost a CEO…”
EEOC report documented systemic discrimination at Jim Crane's logistics company
“He had, the EEOC had issued a hundred page report some years earlier documenting discrimination within his companies. Hiring practices that were discriminating against minorities, that were discriminating against women.”
A manager at Jim Crane's company was imprisoned for war profiteering
“There was a manager at his company who had been sent to jail for war profiteering.”
Most opposing pitchers did not hear the Astros' trash can banging
“They did this to over a hundred pitchers that year. Some of these guys, like guys with 20 years of experience, most of them didn't hear it down in the field, etc.”
MLB revenue sharing and rising valuations disincentivize teams from winning
“Winning is, in baseball in particular, kind of less incentivized than you would think. So there's plenty of teams out there who don't seem to be trying to win very hard. They'll do anyway because of the revenue sharing structure, because of just the fact that …”
Extreme analytical efficiency makes modern baseball an aesthetically stagnant product
“The most perfect, efficient base version of baseball means nothing happens, essentially. As you say, it's a lot of strikeouts. Hitters sell out to hit home runs. Fielders shift so that when hitters don't hit home runs, they'll be in perfect position to catch t…”
MLB playoff share voting incentivized low-paid video staff to facilitate cheating
“The players were also responsible for voting on who else got a cut of these playoff shares, which non-players. And those could include people like the guys who worked in the video room who were helping the players out all year. And these are guys who make 50,0…”
English soccer lags years behind Major League Baseball in data analytics
“I've actually gotten a lot of reach out from England, from English soccer people, and people who work for teams, about the Astros, because that industry is a few years behind.”
Astros' championship was ultimately sealed by executive gut calls over analytics
“I really think what tipped them ultimately was the fact that essentially their gut was what made the final call, like Jeff Luno making informed but gut decisions to really put the finishing touches on this champion, whether you look at
Acquiring Justin Verland…”
Astros owner Jim Crane ran team payroll under $30M during rebuild
“Fighting a Off the union and media who are kind of ripping him for running a payroll that was under thirty million dollars at one point, like embarrassingly low.”
Astros drafted Carlos Correa over Byron Buxton for unquantifiable psychological grit
“To Luno, you know, this is the sort of unquantifiable, like, grit, drive. Growth mindset type of things that they look for. So the scouting side of things really tipped that away from somebody like Byron Buxton, who was, you know, probably consensus number one…”
Astros evaluate prospect academic grades to assess growth mindset and coachability
“Like, they do certainly select four players who they believe have that growth mindset, and in fact, one of the things they look for is good grades, funny enough, for baseball players.
I think good grades are a real indicator of a willingness to learn, which I…”
Ben Reiter: Reports of baseball's business demise are exaggerated
“I'm somebody who thinks that reports of baseball's demise are kind of exaggerated. It is a different sort of business from the NFL and the NBA to which it's always compared. It's a much more local business. It's much more like steady business. You know, it's o…”
Houston Astros ran two concurrent sign-stealing schemes in 2017
“There are actually two sign stealing schemes going on at once. One was happening in the video room. One was happening among the players.”
Bob Feller used a WWII telescope to steal signs in Cleveland
“Bob Feller, the great Indians pitcher, Went to World War II. He interrupted his career for three years to go on a ship in the Pacific, and he brought back this high-powered telescope, and he had it installed in center field in Cleveland Stadium, and they would…”
Jim Crane faced a $5M fine but retained his championship and equity
“He was fined five million dollars, right? That's the maximum fine that an owner can receive in baseball. He lost a few draft picks, but keeps his ring, keeps his players, keeps the franchise valuation.”
Astros' sign-stealing was a symptom of an extreme drive for efficiency
“And I think when I look back at it now, the sign stealing scheme is a symptom of that.”
Houston Astros' ruthless efficiency approach is now standard across MLB
“The Astros were once at the vanguard as far as a valuation slash efficiency based approach to
Team building and running the organization.
They're not really an outlier anymore.
This is how everybody operates.”
Miami Marlins sold for roughly $1.5B despite poor on-field performance
“I mean, look at the Miami Marlins sold for a couple years ago to the group that included Derek Jeter. I forget exactly what it was. It was definitely in the mid one billions, right? For probably the worst franchise in all ways there is.”
MLB commissioner will likely introduce major rule changes to increase action
“I do think, especially because it's at the end of the day, it's an entertainment product. I do think we'll see the commissioner trying to make some significant rule changes. Maybe it's to the strike zone. Maybe it's moving the mound back. To get more offense i…”
MLB analytics departments have not yet solved how to prevent pitcher injuries
“Health is a big thing that teams have still not really cracked as far as, especially how to keep pitchers healthy.”
MLB faces impending labor strife over perceived economic inequity among players
“I think on a labor front, baseball's in for a really rough time coming ahead, because I think that players are just seeing things as less and less equitable.”
Jeff Luhnow faces a harder path back to MLB than fired managers
“Jeff Luno, I think, will have a tougher road. Well, especially now that he's suing the Astros for twenty-two million dollars. That probably doesn't help his chances, but he was always somebody who never quite shed his outsider status. In a lot of ways, he embr…”
Reiter: By some metrics, Jeff Luhnow was MLB's top scouting director
“Some say that by some metrics, he was the best scouting director in the seven years he was there of any scouting director, as far as picks he made that turned into big leaguers.”
Reiter: The 2014 Astros were not run ineptly and had a strong rebuild plan
“And I came away thinking this is not a team that's run cynically or ineptly or an organization that has no idea what it's doing. It's an organization that has a very strong idea of just what it's doing.”
Reiter: Astros combined qualitative human scouting with quantitative performance analytics
“The Astros recognize that humans can detect things especially in players that numbers can't describe, that there aren't numbers for, and the trick is to properly process those observations and incorporate them with the performance data to kind of get the best …”
Reiter: MLB team standings often invert over three-year windows
“Three years down the line, which is actually a long time in baseball terms, it doesn't sound like a long time, but often if you look at the schedule, at the standings from like three years ago, they're almost upside down from where they are today.”
Reiter: Jim Crane's patience set the Astros' rebuild apart
“I think one of the things that really set the pastors apart was patience, you know, was a stomach for the embarrassment and the torture that they had to go through for all those years and a confidence in it, right? Not to deviate from the plan. A lot of the cr…”
Reiter: Computer motion analysis is close to detecting tipped pitches
“Like maybe computers one day will be able to see this. We're probably pretty close actually, as far as motion analysis and things like that, but they don't have those tools quite yet.”
The competitive advantage of pure data analysis in baseball is narrowing
“I think the data advantage is narrowing.
I do.
I mean, you don't hear very much anymore about, oh, this team's onto some new kind of way of analyzing data or discovered some new sorts of data.
Of course, I'm not going to tell you if they are, but it doesn't…”
Astros banged trash cans most during Mike Bolsinger's 2017 outing
“Turned out after people studied the exact pattern of the Astros sign stealing, he had faced them on the night of its peak, like they had banged on their trash can more times on that night than against anybody else.”
Former GM Jeff Luhnow is suing the Houston Astros for $22M
“He's currently suing the Astros for twenty two million dollars because they tore up his contract, firing him for cause in relation to this.”
Houston Astros' valuation rose from $600M to over $2B under Jim Crane
“He bought them for about six hundred million dollars. Less than 10 years later, they're worth estimates between 2,000,000,002 and a half billion.”
MLB is a $10.7B industry diversifying into cable and real estate
“Baseball is a 10.7 billion dollar industry now.
As far as we know, and now ownership is diversifying in all sorts of ways into cable networks, and a lot of teams have property real estate plays surrounding the stadium.”
Winning the 2017 World Series yielded roughly $450K per Astros player
“So in 2017, if you're the Astros and you win the World Series, it was like 450,000 dollar bonus per player. Which is actually a lot of money even for a baseball player. Minimum salary guys would double their salary based on this playoff share.”
Steve Cohen is MLB's richest owner by a factor of three
“And who, by the way, is now like the richest owner in baseball by a factor of three”
Detroit Tigers had only one part-time analyst on staff in 2015
“It was about two years ago that the Detroit Tigers, for example, had like one part-time analyst on their whole staff. Two years ago, it was like maybe 2015 or going into 2016.”
Jeff Luhnow presented a 23-page Astros rebuild guide in 2011 interview
“This was the plan that Jeff Lino presented to him when he sat down with him in 2011 to interview for the job. He made like a 22 or 23 page Essentially guide to what they were going to do and why they had to do it.”
Reiter: Jose Altuve signed for $15,000 after seven MLB teams passed
“A five foot five inch second baseman slap hitting guy who got 15,000 dollars to sign out of Venezuela only after seven teams had passed on him.”