The Ringer: All Posts by Ben Lindbergh2024-03-25T20:51:51-04:00https://www.theringer.com/authors/ben-lindbergh/rss2024-03-25T20:51:51-04:002024-03-25T20:51:51-04:00“Who Won the Day?” Battle Royale: ‘Dragon’s Dogma 2,’ ‘Rise of the Ronin,’ and ‘Princess Peach: Showtime!’
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<figcaption>‘Rise of the Ronin’ | Team Ninja</figcaption>
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<p>A spoiler-free discussion to determine a winner</p> <div id="x5WsEh"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/0Pfl0aVEqd8XgQfaROV6cx?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" allow="clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="uxH6Wp"><br><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Pfl0aVEqd8XgQfaROV6cx">Ben, Jessica Clemons, and Matt James react to the trailer for <em>Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra</em></a>, the news that Larian Studios will not be making more <em>Baldur’s Gate</em>, and a report that Sony has paused production of the PSVR2. Then they break down three big new games that came out on the same day (<em>Dragon’s Dogma 2</em>, <em>Rise of the Ronin</em>, and <em>Princess Peach: Showtime!</em>) in a spoiler-free discussion to determine which one won the day (22:23).</p>
<p id="KDoVre">Host: Ben Lindbergh<br>Guests: Jessica Clemons and Matt James<br>Producer: Devon Renaldo<br>Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal</p>
<p id="e91b2m"><strong>Subscribe:</strong> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3z9QIZzDR4o34uBBbsxb0z">Spotify</a> / <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ringer-verse/id1558211702">Apple Podcasts</a></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2024/3/25/24112052/who-won-the-day-battle-royale-dragons-dogma-2-rise-of-the-ronin-and-princess-peach-showtimeBen Lindbergh2024-03-25T19:30:25-04:002024-03-25T19:30:25-04:00Five Big Questions About MLB’s Investigation Into Shohei Ohtani and His Interpreter
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<p>The newest Dodgers star and his longtime interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, are at the center of an investigation into sports gambling debts and what Ohtani’s attorneys are calling “massive theft.” What do we know? Why has the story changed so much already? And what could come next?</p> <p id="BLRCcE"><em>Editor’s note, March 25, 2024: On Monday afternoon at Dodger Stadium, Shohei Ohtani (accompanied by his new interpreter, Will Ireton) </em><a href="https://twitter.com/TalkinBaseball_/status/1772383712811835632"><em>read a statement</em></a><em> in which he denied betting on baseball or any other sport or asking anyone to do so on his behalf. He also said that his former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, placed the bets without Ohtani’s knowledge, stole money from his account, failed to communicate to Ohtani that members of the media were inquiring about the wire transfers, and falsely told a representative</em><em><strong> </strong></em><em>for Ohtani that Ohtani had paid off Mizuhara’s debt. “All of this has been a complete lie,” Ohtani said.</em></p>
<p id="LW6vDO"><em>Ohtani added he had no knowledge of Mizuhara’s gambling and debt until after the Dodgers and Padres’ first game in Seoul last Wednesday, when Mizuhara addressed the Dodgers about his gambling addiction. Ohtani said he never agreed to pay off the debt or make payments to a bookmaker and that Mizuhara admitted to Ohtani after the postgame meeting that Mizuhara had been using Ohtani’s account to send the payments. Ohtani added that he’s “beyond shocked,” that he’s assisting in all ongoing investigations, and that he would let his lawyers “handle matters from here on out.” He did not take questions.</em></p>
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<p id="AxK1TP">Before this week, the worst one could say about Shohei Ohtani’s financial judgment was that he’d <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/business/bitcoin-crypto-ftx-ohtani/index.html">hawked FTX</a>. His sole connection to shaky collateral was a twice-repaired UCL, and his only known ties to bookmaking operations were <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60200016">the</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40988134-shohei-ohtani?from_search=true&from_srp=IHOPWd6Ust&qid=1">biographies</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shohei-Ohtani-Sports-Superstars-Ethan/dp/1637385595">about</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/My-Sporting-Hero-favorite-Biographies/dp/B0BTKY17PY">him</a>. The darkest secrets he was known to have hidden were his nuptials and the name of his dog.</p>
<p id="C9TEW0">Ohtani, Major League Baseball’s two-way player and singular sensation, had hogged center stage all offseason, occasionally commanding the crossover, mainstream attention that makes him the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar">quasar</a> at the heart of the game’s galaxy. He became the only player in baseball history to win a second unanimous MVP award; he signed a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2023/12/10/23995331/shohei-ohtani-signs-los-angeles-dodgers-700-million-dollar-contract">record-setting $700 million contract</a> with the Los Angeles Dodgers after a free agent sweepstakes that sent fans in multiple countries on <a href="https://theathletic.com/5130131/2023/12/12/ohtani-plane-toronto/">flights of fancy</a>; he formed a family and hard-launched it to the intense delight and/or <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/01/japan/society/ohtani-marriage-reactions/">heartbreak</a> of his global stan base. On Wednesday, Ohtani hard-launched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFOIbdpDCEc">two hits</a> on Opening Day after receiving a rock-star—OK, K-pop-star—reception in Seoul, the site of MLB’s season-opening series.</p>
<p id="YsRJLB">And then, just as spring started, the winter of Ohtani content turned to discontent. Following that first game, the <em>Los Angeles Times </em>and ESPN <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-20/gambling-story">reported</a> <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39768770/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-interpreter-fired-theft">that</a> Ohtani’s attorney had said that the newly debuted Dodger was “the victim of a massive theft.” The alleged thief was Ohtani’s longtime interpreter and close confidant, Ippei Mizuhara. At least $4.5 million was wired from Ohtani’s bank account to an associate of <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/who-is-orange-county-bookie-who-received-millions-of-dollars-from-shohei-ohtanis-account/3369779/">Mathew Bowyer</a>, a bookmaker in California who’s under federal investigation because sports betting is illegal in the state. However, virtually all the other details—including who wired the money and why—are much murkier. </p>
<p id="CdXBlr">By contrast, the stakes couldn’t be clearer: nothing less than the career and reputation of baseball’s best, highest-paid, and most famous player, not to mention the sport’s perceived integrity in an era of ever-tightening ties between sports leagues and sportsbooks. </p>
<p id="CHM4W4">In response to reporters’ inquiries, Ohtani’s spokesman and Mizuhara first told one story (that Ohtani had helped pay off Mizuhara’s massive sports gambling debts), then switched to a second story that directly contradicted the first (that Ohtani had no knowledge of the debts and hadn’t transferred the funds). The flip-flop fueled conversations and conspiracy theories, fanned further by Mizuhara’s firing and <a href="https://twitter.com/FabianArdaya/status/1770697911015280764">replacement</a>, an <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39780093/sources-reps-dodgers-shohei-ohtani-ask-investigate-theft">ESPN report</a> that Ohtani’s representatives had contacted unspecified law enforcement authorities to request an investigation, and a subsequent <a href="https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/irs-investigating-ohtanis-interpreter-alleged-bookmaker/">AP<em> </em>report</a> that Mizuhara and Bowyer (but not Ohtani) are under criminal investigation by the IRS. On Friday evening, MLB <a href="https://www.mlb.com/press-release/press-release-major-league-baseball-statement-on-ippei-mizuhara">announced</a> that its department of investigations has initiated a “formal process investigating the matter.”</p>
<p id="Onl22z">To borrow a phrase from last year’s ESPN-produced <a href="https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2023/10/shohei-ohtani-beyond-the-dream-debuts-november-17-on-espn/">documentary</a> about Ohtani, we’ve gone beyond the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/3/9/22320848/shohei-ohtani-season-preview-two-way">dream</a>. There’s no way for this story to have a happy ending, but the sadness of the denouement depends on details we don’t have. That lack of clarity makes for a vast <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_space">possibility space</a> in which some outcomes seem more likely than others but few are off the table entirely. Ohtani could be a deceptive degenerate, or he could be blameless, legally and/or ethically. He could be in big trouble—with both baseball and the law—or in no trouble at all. And MLB could have a huge scandal on its hands or one that will be easily dismissed, if not as easily forgotten.</p>
<p id="aW1MfT">Broadly speaking, there are three conceivable possibilities: that Ohtani knew and did nothing, and Ippei orchestrated everything; that Ohtani wasn’t the bettor, but he did knowingly send the money to pay off his friend’s debts; or that Ohtani placed the bets himself, in which case Mizuhara is merely a fall guy (whether willing or otherwise). Each potential explanation carries different consequences and spurs its own set of questions, which we’ll explore.</p>
<p id="AvMyYl">In January, I <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2023/12/12/23998355/shohei-ohtani-700-million-contract-deferred-money-los-angeles-dodgers">asked and answered</a> 17 questions about Ohtani’s deal with the Dodgers. Today I’ll confine myself to five high-level mysteries about the mess he’s enmeshed in. Elusive as the answers seem, they will surface—and when they do, they’ll determine the course this uncharacteristically unsavory Ohtani news cycle takes.</p>
<h4 id="Ie4yuf">1. Were any bets placed on baseball?</h4>
<p id="eP8JjI">Nothing matters more than this. If the answer is yes, then there are realistic scenarios in which Ohtani would face stiff discipline, up to and including a lifetime ban from MLB. If the answer is no, then the worst-case outcomes for Ohtani would be taken off the table, and he might well emerge from the situation without suffering any punishment.</p>
<p id="OHAUhG">That stark disparity stems from <a href="https://content.mlb.com/documents/8/2/2/296982822/Major_League_Rule_21.pdf">major league Rule 21</a>, which lays out the <a href="https://theathletic.com/5360621/2024/03/22/mlb-player-betting-rules-explained/">penalties</a> for players, umpires, and team or league officials or employees who place improper bets. Rule 21(d)(1) states that players and employees who bet on a game in which they aren’t involved face a one-year suspension. Rule 21(d)(2) warns that those who bet on a game in which they <em>are</em> involved shall be banned permanently. (You may have heard of Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose.)</p>
<p id="PxA8Jx">Admittedly, non-baseball bets wouldn’t be out of the reach of the long arm of commissioner Rob Manfred (let alone of Uncle Sam). MLB players and personnel <em>are</em> allowed to bet on other sports, provided that those bets are placed legally. But any bets with Bowyer couldn’t have been because sports betting is still illegal in California. Thus, whoever placed these bets would still be subject to Rule 21(d)(3), which specifies that an applicable person who places a bet with an illegal bookmaker or their associate “shall be subject to such penalty as the Commissioner deems appropriate in light of the facts and circumstances of the conduct.”</p>
<p id="V8ygil">Rule 21 also includes a blanket “other misconduct” clause, which says that “any and all other acts, transactions, practices or conduct not to be in the best interests of Baseball are prohibited and shall be subject to such penalties, including permanent ineligibility, as the facts in the particular case may warrant.” </p>
<p id="P8ZUY1">In other words: The commissioner has a lot of leeway to handle the situation as he sees fit. That’s the thing, though: If either Mizuhara or Ohtani did bet on baseball, that leeway goes away. The facts and circumstances are immaterial; it’s an automatic ejection, as with telling an umpire that <a href="https://www.audacy.com/national/sports/ex-mlb-umpire-reveals-what-gets-player-ejected-every-time">they’re horseshit</a>. If neither bet on baseball, extenuating circumstances count, and the commissioner can be lenient.</p>
<p id="yuRduf">As of now, there’s no evidence that the alleged bets with Bowyer’s operation were related to baseball. ESPN has cited “multiple sources,” including Mizuhara, who’ve insisted that none of the bets were on baseball: “I never bet on baseball,” Ippei told ESPN. “That’s 100 percent. I knew that rule.” The bets, he said, were placed on international soccer, the NBA, the NFL, and college football. That may be true, but Mizuhara’s version of events can’t be taken at face value. (Neither, <a href="https://theathletic.com/5364216/2024/03/23/shohei-ohtani-ippei-mizuhara-biography-inaccuracies/">evidently</a>, can every declaration in his public bio.) If he was a compulsive gambler facing steep debts, it might have been hard for him to resist using his inside info on baseball’s best player. Which is why it’s imperative that MLB gets to the bottom of this question.</p>
<h4 id="8CVuyT">2. What’s with the conflicting stories?</h4>
<p id="v3DdkE">The strangest aspect of this story is the about-face by both Mizuhara and Ohtani’s spokesman between Tuesday and Wednesday. Remember, both said on Tuesday that Ohtani had made the payments to settle Ippei’s debt. According to the <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39784809/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-mizuhara-theft-line">timeline</a> published Friday at ESPN—the <a href="https://community-sitcom.fandom.com/wiki/Darkest_Timeline">darkest timeline</a>, save for any timeline that includes bets being placed on baseball—the spokesman quoted Ohtani as saying, “Yeah, I sent several large payments. That’s the maximum amount I could send.” Mizuhara corroborated that tale, telling ESPN, “I explained my situation, and obviously he wasn’t happy about it, but he said he would help me.” (Mizuhara added that Ohtani didn’t know or ask about the legality—or lack thereof—of the payments and that “I don’t think either of us thought about that at the time at all.”)</p>
<p id="ERYWiY">On Wednesday, both Mizuhara and the spokesman disavowed those previous statements. “Ippei was lying,” the spokesman said. “Shohei didn’t know.” Ippei then corroborated <em>that </em>tale, and Ohtani’s attorneys pivoted to providing an account of “massive theft.” What the hell happened here, and what <em>did </em><a href="https://blogs.fangraphs.com/effectively-wild-episode-2141-what-did-sho-know/">Sho know</a>? </p>
<p id="MF0amN">Well, it is illegal to wire money to an illegal bookmaking operation, even if it’s to do a solid for a friend, not to place bets for oneself. Perhaps the lawyers stepped in to point out that having copped to that crime put their client at risk, and they advised shifting the story to one that would exonerate him. (Maybe someone should’ve consulted them sooner.)</p>
<p id="RbLf0m">If this is what happened, other aspects wouldn’t add up. Would Ohtani have turned on his bestie so suddenly? Would Ippei go along with a <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WorkedShoot">worked shoot</a> that painted him not just as a guy with a gambling problem who unknowingly placed illegal bets, but as someone who also stole millions of dollars to cover the resulting debts? If not, wouldn’t that story probably be exposed as fiction? And in that case, wouldn’t the cover-up be worse than the crime?</p>
<p id="S3VkYf">No one would think less of Ohtani for using his wealth to bail out a desperate friend—hell, few people would think less of Ohtani for actually betting on non-baseball sports, which is legal in most of the country. But attempting to throw that friend under the bus would be a different matter.</p>
<p id="bs9W6P">Plus, Ohtani might not even get in trouble for trying to be a Good Samaritan. Yes, in that scenario he would’ve broken the law, but as <em>The Athletic </em><a href="https://theathletic.com/5361168/2024/03/22/shohei-ohtani-ippei-mizuhara-betting-scandal-questions/">noted</a>, “The government generally goes after bookmakers, not bettors”—and Ohtani wouldn’t even have been a bettor. The consequences for falsely reporting a “massive theft” would probably be way worse.</p>
<p id="Y1zEZd">Then there’s another obvious question: <em>Could</em> Mizuhara have sent $4.5 million or more without Ohtani’s knowledge? That <a href="https://cupofcoffee.beehiiv.com/p/cup-coffee-extra-breaking-shohei-ohtaniippei-mizuhara-story">doesn’t sound easy</a>, but it isn’t impossible. For one thing, the payments were broken into $500,000 installments, which may have prompted less scrutiny from the bank, <a href="https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-did-shohei-ohtani-allegedly-wire">especially</a> with a wealthy, reputable client like Ohtani. Ohtani has never seemed primarily motivated by maximizing his nest egg; he passed up (or delayed) a huge payday by leaving Nippon Professional Baseball for MLB when international signing rules limited him to the major league minimum. Between his salary and his endorsements, Ohtani made <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/35978534/shohei-ohtani-make-mlb-record-65m-2023-according-forbes">$65 million</a> last year and is in line to make <a href="https://www.sportico.com/leagues/baseball/2024/mlb-highest-paid-players-2024-shohei-ohtani-yoshinobu-yamamoto-1234771469/">slightly more</a> in 2024, not counting the hundreds of millions he has coming to him in (potentially tax-free) deferred dollars down the road. How closely do we think he’s been monitoring his balance?</p>
<p id="XIhJHY">What’s more, Ohtani may have given great latitude in his personal life and financial matters to Ippei, whom he met in 2013 when Ohtani was an 18-year-old rookie for the Nippon-Ham Fighters. Ohtani has been wealthy, well-known, and single-mindedly devoted to baseball since he was a teenager; it’s not unreasonable to think that he delegated more to Ippei than was wise. (Never underestimate how oblivious kids and the rich can be about money.)</p>
<p id="6Zzh46">Ippei wasn’t just Ohtani’s longtime interpreter, though that alone is a fairly intimate role; he also <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/shohei-ohtani-got-his-driver-s-license">drove Ohtani around</a>, played and practiced with him, went out to eat with him, and so on. The two were constant companions: Ippei, who is 10 years older, described himself and Ohtani to ESPN as “brothers” and said he spent more time with Ohtani than with his own wife. Two team changes, a move between countries and continents, and <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/news/ohtani-aims-for-improvement-even-after-mvp-season#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20the,the%20lockout%20ended.">a pandemic</a> couldn’t keep them apart. Only this scandal could separate them.</p>
<p id="T5Dj7J">Another <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DA0pQLNpGb0">common objection</a> to the “Ippei acted alone” theory of the case is the size of his debt: Why would a bookie allow an interpreter who was making at most roughly $500,000 a year to rack up many multiples of that in debt? I’ve never been a bookie, but the potential for extortion could’ve crossed Bowyer’s mind. One ESPN story suggests that the name on the wire transfers might have had value: “Bowyer allowed people to believe Ohtani was a client in order to boost business.” Bowyer’s own attorney has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/23/shohei-ohtani-bookie-bowyer/#:~:text=Mizuhara%20told%20ESPN,six%20figures.">attributed</a> her client’s largesse to the fact that Ippei was Ohtani’s best friend. And if Ippei said that Ohtani would make him whole, those periodic payments would have bolstered his story. Plus, which seems more plausible: that Bowyer extended Ippei a large line of credit, or that Ohtani placed the bets but didn’t cover his losses and thus racked up some massive debts?</p>
<p id="czbLyk">On Thursday, Ohtani’s reps advanced an explanation for the story switcheroo, which ESPN recounted: “As Ohtani’s handlers tried to determine what had happened, they initially relied solely on Mizuhara, who continued to translate for Ohtani.” Friday’s more detailed account offered further insight into what seems to have been an unbelievably bungled response to a serious situation. The rep who initially confirmed Mizuhara’s account was a crisis-communications spokesman who had just been hired and who was communicating with ESPN even as the spokesman was still “getting up to speed on information from the Ohtani camp”—meaning Mizuhara, evidently. Is the point of hiring a crisis-communications spokesman to make the crisis … worse? That the spokesman and, seemingly, Ohtani’s agent Nez Balelo were communicating with Ohtani via Mizuhara—assuming Ohtani was even involved—despite Mizuhara ostensibly being the cause of the crisis is confounding enough. That they then arranged for Mizuhara to speak to ESPN for 90 minutes without a lawyer present is mind-boggling. Great job defusing the situation, fellas! Truly, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdjf4lMmiiI">top men</a>.</p>
<p id="hhKOQh">Ippei told ESPN’s Tisha Thompson that he never purposely misinformed Ohtani while fielding inquiries from ESPN. Even if that’s true, perhaps he didn’t inform Ohtani at all, which is what Ohtani’s reps now claim. (Though Ohtani typically—but <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OMWOxMYGJk">not always</a>—communicates through Ippei in public settings, he is, by many accounts, proficient enough in English that it seems unlikely that his interpreter could completely mistranslate his words in his presence without Ohtani noticing.) If Ippei was withholding and fabricating throughout the exchange, it’s unclear how he thought he would get away with that indefinitely—crime doesn’t Ippei—but perhaps he was in panic mode and simply trying to buy time. If so, time ran out after the Dodgers game on Wednesday, when team owner Mark Walter told the players that a negative story was coming, Ippei addressed the clubhouse to apologize and disclose his gambling addiction, and Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman stood up and said that Ohtani had helped pay Ippei’s debts.</p>
<p id="6CWD9Q">According to Ohtani’s camp—minus Mizuhara, a little too late—Ohtani didn’t realize what was happening until a new interpreter was brought in during the postgame clubhouse meeting. While traveling back to the hotel, Ohtani told his reps that he “didn’t recognize Mizuhara’s version of the events.” Shortly after that, the reps said, Ohtani discovered money missing from his account. “He didn’t know what the fuck was going on,” the spokesman told ESPN. Neither did the spokesman, it seems. At the very least, it sounds as if Ohtani and his team were entirely too lax and gullible. But then, that <em>would</em> tend to support the idea that they all trusted Ippei implicitly, which could lend credence to the notion that Ippei had the authority and autonomy to betray his “brother.”</p>
<p id="yJaW0i">Reality gets messy, and the truth could be a blend of both stories. Maybe Ohtani made some of the payments, but Mizuhara made more without his knowledge. Or maybe Ohtani made <em>all</em> of the payments but did so under false pretenses, such that his lawyers could assert that Mizuhara scammed him.</p>
<p id="sDzUmG">And while we can’t rule out the “Ohtani as criminal mastermind” theory, it certainly doesn’t seem <em>likely</em> that Ohtani is secretly a gambling addict. ESPN’s report mentions that “multiple sources, including Mizuhara, [said] that Ohtani does not gamble,” which is backed up by Bowyer’s lawyer’s statement that Bowyer “never met or spoke with Shohei Ohtani,” as well as Ohtani’s former teammates’ <a href="https://twitter.com/jefffletcherocr/status/1771220123468054957">contention</a> to Angels beat writer Jeff Fletcher that Ohtani “never paid attention to other sports.” But people dealing with addiction often get good at hiding it, even from their friends and relatives. And a month ago, it didn’t seem likely that Ohtani was secretly in a long-term relationship and about to announce he was married. Watching someone play baseball doesn’t mean we really know them. Prior to this week, Ohtani had a pretty unimpeachable reputation on a personal level, but that’s partly because he’s so private that there was little to impeach.</p>
<p id="49NQa4">The tragic thing is that the more exculpatory the truth is for Ohtani, the more manipulative it would mean Mizuhara was. Which means that the only way for Ohtani to face no legal liability or discipline from the league is for his friend and brother to have totally taken advantage of him. Maybe he’d make that trade, but it’s bound to be a painful one. We’ve seen Ohtani play through—and <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2018/09/05/shohei-ohtani-tommy-john-surgery-ucl-damage">excel despite</a>—the distress of impending serious surgery. But it’s one thing to lose a ligament and another to lose a friend. The best-case outcome for MLB is that an addiction costs Ippei his livelihood and robs him and Ohtani of a cherished relationship. (The breakup feels real; Shohei has <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/mlb/article-13230911/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-deletes-instagram-posts-gambling-mlb.html">scrubbed Ippei from his Instagram</a>.) That would hardly be something to celebrate.</p>
<h4 id="H5yKGu">3. Will Manfred and MLB give Ohtani preferential treatment?</h4>
<p id="t3vNUJ">Not if they want to maintain credibility in staying on top of the potential ill effects of the league’s embrace of betting. Ohtani is MLB’s golden goose, the last player Manfred would want to miss time or have his character tarnished. The league has already <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-mlbpa-agree-to-changes-shohei-ohtani-rule">rewritten the rules</a> on the field to accommodate Ohtani. That’s all the more reason to treat him the same off the field as anyone else.</p>
<p id="W1AFP3">That’s not to say that the league should go out of its way to make an example of Ohtani. In 2015, Marlins pitcher Jarred Cosart was found to have placed illegal non-baseball bets. Manfred <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2015/04/03/mlb-fines-marlins-pitcher-jarred-cosart-for-illegal-bets/25259495/">fined him</a> and moved on, and everyone forgot about it until we started searching for precedents for the current controversy. If Ohtani didn’t do anything worse than Cosart, he shouldn’t suffer a harsher fate.</p>
<p id="KLqE0A">However, there would be a price to pay for any appearance of favoritism. ESPN first approached MLB about this story on Sunday evening (Monday morning in Seoul). On Thursday, <em>The Athletic </em><a href="https://theathletic.com/5358623/2024/03/21/shohei-ohtani-dodgers-interpreter-theft-quiet/">reported</a> that Ohtani was “not currently facing discipline” and that he was “not believed to be under active investigation by the league.” On Friday morning, a league spokesperson <a href="https://theathletic.com/5361168/2024/03/22/shohei-ohtani-ippei-mizuhara-betting-scandal-questions/">said</a> MLB was “looking into” the matter and “gathering information.” “Gathering information” isn’t so different from “investigating,” but the lack of an official inquiry—and the Friday evening form the eventual announcement took—<a href="https://twitter.com/EvanDrellich/status/1771168606442680591">invited</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/EvanDrellich/status/1771295512928391185">criticism</a>.</p>
<p id="fyVe2z">We can make some allowances for the timing—Manfred and the Dodgers were traveling to and from Seoul—and it’s generally better to slow down before acting than to jump the gun the way Ohtani’s PR people did. But the backlash to the merest hint that MLB might be failing to do its due diligence illustrates the importance of the appearance of propriety. The more rigorous MLB seems to be, the less likely it is that some <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/04/25/michael-jordan-retirement-gambling-conspiracy">Michael Jordan</a>–<a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/04/25/michael-jordan-retirement-gambling-conspiracy">esque</a> stain will stick to Ohtani even in the event that he did nothing wrong. Some people still believe that Houston Astros second baseman José Altuve was <a href="https://www.sportskeeda.com/baseball/news-when-said-don-t-believe-i-didn-t-buzzer-when-jose-altuve-slammed-critics-accusing-using-electronic-devices-wake-astros-cheating-scandal">wearing a buzzer</a> in 2017; Manfred is <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-commissioner-rob-manfred-regrets-giving-2017-astros-players-immunity-in-sign-stealing-scandal/">well aware</a> of what happens when fans believe players got off too easy.</p>
<p id="3TrhkT">The 2017 Astros actually <em>did </em>steal signs illegally, though. As of yet, there’s no proof that Ohtani broke any rules or laws, let alone compromised the sport’s competitive integrity.</p>
<h4 id="isX8H7">4. Will this scandal inspire a larger sports gambling reckoning?</h4>
<p id="TWVdcU">Nah. Sports leagues have been in bed with sportsbooks for years now, and they’re burrowing <a href="https://theathletic.com/5352720/2024/03/19/nba-league-pass-betting-odds/">deeper under the blankets by the day</a>. (Sports media is widely sponsored by sportsbooks, too.) Unless somebody is found to have bet on baseball—which, we must stress once more, hasn’t been alleged—this likely won’t morph into an extinction-level scandal that forces serious self-reflection. Still, you can dodge <a href="https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2024/02/02/asteroid-passes-earth-nasa-telescope/8831706901800/">potentially hazardous</a> asteroids for only so many centuries before one of them moves from close call to collision course.</p>
<p id="hev1bs">March is <a href="https://www.ncpgambling.org/problem-gambling/pgam/">Problem Gambling Awareness Month</a>, so this story is certainly doing its part. The publicity surrounding Ohtani could make this case a useful <a href="https://defector.com/mlb-has-a-gambling-problem-even-if-shohei-ohtani-doesnt">stalking</a> <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/21/sports-gambling-scandals-legalization-00148243">horse</a> for those in favor of <a href="https://igamingbusiness.com/sports-betting/sports-betting-regulation/road-to-ice-2024-sports-betting-advertising-coming-under-fire/">regulating</a> <a href="https://www.legalsportsreport.com/131905/regulators-prepare-for-sports-betting-ads-nfl-return/">sports</a> <a href="https://theathletic.com/4496847/2023/05/12/sports-gambling-ads-restrictions/">gambling</a> <a href="https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/SB-Blogs/OpEds/2023/06/01-FreemanKrochakZilber.aspx">marketing</a>. Conveniently for MLB, though, this situation revolved around <em>illegal </em>betting, not the kind that could ensnare an official league partner (though Mizuhara said he had previously bet on DraftKings, which <a href="https://www.sportico.com/business/sports-betting/2023/draftkings-sportsbook-teams-leagues-partnerships-1234710172/">does</a> have a relationship with the league). Manfred could even use this situation to stigmatize unsanctioned bookmaking and praise the virtues of gambling <em>legally</em>. After all, if wagering were legal in California, nobody would have had to be in business with Bowyer.</p>
<p id="6G1Kdq">Plenty of gamblers have legally ruined their lives; it can come with the habit. Nor need we <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-10/ex-dodger-yasiel-puig-new-federal-charges-sports-gambling-investigation">look</a> <a href="https://theathletic.com/4254474/2023/02/27/mlb-minor-leaguer-gambling-ineligible/">beyond</a> <a href="https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/39436918/brad-bohannon-ex-alabama-baseball-coach-sanctioned-betting-scandal">baseball</a> (<a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/38245548/why-some-players-want-change-nfl-gambling-policy-2023">or</a> <a href="https://apnews.com/article/jacksonville-jaguars-employee-fraud-176075a2d6cffd292a856e87f7d9d81b">the</a> <a href="https://theathletic.com/5349453/2024/03/18/jacksonville-jaguars-amit-patel-fraud-prison/">NFL</a>) to find cautionary stories that started on solid legal ground. If Ippei—who was raised in California but said he didn’t know that wagering was illegal there—succumbed to a severe gambling problem, he’s <a href="https://money.com/gambling-addiction-all-time-high/">one</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/01/sports-betting-regulation-gambling-addiction">of</a> <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2024/01/23/sports-betting-is-booming-so-are-calls-to-gambling-addiction-helplines/">a</a> <a href="https://abc7chicago.com/sports-gambling-addiction-super-bowl-betting-online/14396803/">growing</a> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-01-20/gambling-risks-rise-for-young-people-how-to-lower-the-stakes">number</a> of people in the U.S. who are suffering from the same vice. That doesn’t mean we’ll get game-fixing again at the big league level, but it does suggest that Ohtani, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/lebron-james-maverick-carter-betting-bookie-7d7aa081a60790aa05afff5a1ebe0823">like LeBron before him</a>, won’t be the last star caught up in something similarly unseemly.</p>
<h4 id="pujJfL">5. When will we actually get some answers?</h4>
<p id="UCNkEY">Fittingly enough, we don’t know. <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39788249/major-league-baseball-opens-investigation-shohei-ohtani">According to</a> ESPN’s T.J. Quinn, MLB will try to arrange interviews with all relevant parties, but it can’t compel Ippei’s participation now that he no longer works for a team. (Too bad MLB didn’t interview him on Tuesday or Wednesday, when he was all too eager to talk.) Ohtani, too, could decline to cooperate, a right afforded to members of the MLBPA. Or, per Quinn, he could “invoke his right, under an interpretation of arbitration precedent, to refuse cooperation because of a criminal investigation that’s already underway” (though he’s not known to be the subject of any criminal investigation and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/23/shohei-ohtani-bookie-bowyer/#:~:text=According%20to%20Bowyer%E2%80%99s%20attorney%2C%20prosecutors%20didn%E2%80%99t%20show%20interest%20in%20pursuing%20Ohtani%E2%80%99s%20role.%20Bass%20said%20that%20she%20called%20federal%20prosecutors%20in%20January%20after%20learning%20of%20Ohtani%E2%80%99s%20involvement%20from%20an%20ESPN%20reporter.%20%E2%80%9CThey%20were%20not%20the%20least%20bit%20interested%2C%E2%80%9D%20Bass%20said.">doesn’t seem likely</a> to be targeted).</p>
<p id="v2OrAN">MLB’s paid administrative leave policy, which Trevor Bauer and Julio Urías were placed on during their days with the Dodgers, applies only to players who are being investigated for violations of the joint domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse policy. Ohtani hasn’t even been accused of dealing directly with Bowyer, to say nothing of betting on baseball. Thus, the <a href="https://twitter.com/Alden_Gonzalez/status/1771313070679486845">expectation</a> is that he’ll remain on the active roster and continue to play as the process plays out.</p>
<p id="naVx49">That’s probably going to be weird for a while. On Wednesday, the Dodgers released a <a href="https://twitter.com/FabianArdaya/status/1770607820536422469">boilerplate statement</a>. Before Thursday’s game, manager Dave Roberts—the only member of the organization who talked to the press—<a href="https://www.dailynews.com/2024/03/21/shohei-ohtani-era-with-dodgers-now-includes-gambling-scandal/amp/">said</a>, “I’m not going to talk about it.” Team president Stan Kasten declined to comment, and Friedman remarked, “There’s nothing to say. Literally nothing to say.” Ohtani <a href="https://twitter.com/FabianArdaya/status/1770815193846546466">didn’t answer questions</a> after the game.</p>
<p id="3AcbuU">The Dodgers will return to playing exhibition games in Arizona on Sunday, in advance of Thursday’s resumption of their regular season. It may be harder to duck questions at home than it was 6,000 miles away, and while this week’s events made clear that we can’t anticipate what Ohtani’s handlers will do, it wouldn’t be surprising for him to remain mum on the matter until MLB’s investigation concludes. In the meantime, his reps (and, separately, Ippei’s) will likely <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-21/is-shohei-ohtani-a-theft-victim-is-he-in-trouble-legal-experts-say-probes-are-certain">comb through records</a> to document whatever access the interpreter may have had to Ohtani’s accounts, the circumstances in which the payments were made, and any relevant communications between the two. The public may have to be patient—the wheels of justice sometimes turn slowly at MLB, though they’re <a href="https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/taxes/irs-targets-high-earners-who-dont-file-tax-returns-3a984c1b">grinding faster</a> at the IRS these days—but this doesn’t seem like a case where we’ll never know what happened.</p>
<p id="Pw1j0y">I don’t have hard-and-fast beliefs about any of this because we don’t know enough to draw conclusions. Granted, who <em>wouldn’t</em> want the most talented, dynamic, and seemingly likable player the sport has seen in years to stay clean? (Well, maybe some Giants fans.) Without Ohtani, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/10/17/16043796/the-postseasons-true-revelation-is-a-two-way-mystery-man-3e2e8585e6ba">what</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/6/1/22462837/shohei-ohtani-war-stats">would</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/6/25/22550308/shohei-ohtani-popularity-two-way-home-run-derby">I</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/7/12/22573272/shohei-ohtani-first-two-way-season-nippon-ham-fighters">write</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/10/5/22710412/shohei-ohtani-angels-mvp">and</a> <a href="https://effectivelywild.fandom.com/wiki/Shohei_Ohtani?so=search">talk</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2023/6/28/23777168/shohei-ohtani-mvp-los-angeles-angels">about</a>? But the inner-fan impulse to cry “Say it ain’t Sho” isn’t a reason not to follow the wire transfers where they lead, without fear or favor. My mental <em>New York Times</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/upshot/needle-election-night-2018-midterms.html">needle</a> has been pinging among multiple outcomes, though it seems to have settled on “this is more likely to blow over than to blow up.” (Any more than it’s blown up already, that is.) But Ohtani plus <em>anything</em> is a formula for a frenzy, and unless he’s conclusively cleared, this story won’t die down—which isn’t the way Manfred wants to steal headlines from March Madness as a new MLB season starts.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="HzqKwU">Up until now, the news about Ohtani has almost always been blissful, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/9/14/17858936/los-angeles-angels-shohei-ohtani-rookie-season-success">except</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2023/8/24/23844952/shohei-ohtani-ucl-injury-free-agency-contract-angels-future">when</a> he’s blown out his elbow. (In Japan, he’s <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ohtani-mizuhara-gambling-image-508e55ca5039ea8ce65cd4ed163ce725">known</a> as “the perfect person.”) Now, we’re learning what it looks like when Ohtani’s celebrity backfires. The 29-year-old’s UCL issues have jeopardized his future on the mound, but they don’t endanger his hitting. Maybe by default, then, the specter of bad sports betting behavior poses a greater existential threat—however remote—to his future on the field. The next time he fails to silence the skeptics will be the first, but the hurdle he’s facing is unprecedented: the kind he can’t overcome with swings or sweepers.</p>
<aside id="02VWd6"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2024/3/23/24109952/shohei-ohtani-gambling-intepreter-mlb-investigation-biggest-questionsBen Lindbergh2024-03-19T10:33:04-04:002024-03-19T10:33:04-04:00MLB’s Opening Series Is a Matchup Between Two Extraordinary Teams
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<p>The Dodgers have pop; the Padres have shortstops. Both could make major league history this season.</p> <p id="JPRHZi">Unless you set an alarm, you probably won’t be awake for the first pitch of the MLB regular season. At 7:05 Wednesday evening in Seoul—that’s 6:05 a.m. ET/3:05 a.m. PT in the States—the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres will square off in the first of two games that count toward the standings. It’s the <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/baseball-games-played-outside-the-us-c272441130">first time</a> regular-season games have been played in South Korea and the first time in five years that the MLB season has started outside the U.S.</p>
<p id="Nk9NFC">The Seoul series is a star-studded matchup between nominal NL West rivals, featuring <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/projections?type=fangraphsdc&pos=&stats=bat">seven</a> of the sport’s projected top 40 position players and <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/projections?type=fangraphsdc&pos=&stats=pit">eight</a> of the projected top 50 pitchers. The Dodgers and Padres both played “checkbook baseball” this winter, to <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnDenton555/status/1769072403441730023">borrow a phrase</a> from Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas, albeit in different ways. The Dodgers distributed checks—committing <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2024/1/11/24033840/los-angeles-dodgers-billion-dollar-offseason-spending-recruiting">more than $1 billion</a> to Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, and other prominent players—while the Padres tore them up, <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/09/padres-plan-to-reduce-payroll-to-around-200mm-front-office-changes-possible.html">trimming payroll</a> following the <a href="https://www.sportico.com/leagues/baseball/2023/mlb-preview-san-diego-padres-spending-1234717726/">spending spree</a> that culminated in them missing the 2023 postseason. Despite the <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/11/padres-owner-peter-seidler-passes-away.html">death</a> of owner Peter Seidler, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2020/9/1/21409765/san-diego-padres-aj-preller-trades-mike-clevinger">hyperactive</a> Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller was <a href="https://twitter.com/dril/status/514845232509501440">at it again</a>, as the Friars followed last year’s <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2023/10/3/23901260/2023-mlb-playoffs-payroll-postmortem-big-spenders">unlucky campaign</a> with a tumultuous offseason that saw them trade away their best hitter (Juan Soto) and trade <em>for</em> their projected best pitcher (Dylan Cease).</p>
<p id="V7S7AY">To greet these two games between two teams, let’s conduct two investigations. We’ll focus on one potentially historic aspect of each roster: the Dodgers’ ridiculous top of the lineup, and the Padres’ “<a href="https://breakfast-cereal.fandom.com/wiki/Cap%27n_Crunch%27s_Oops!_All_Berries">Oops! All shortstops</a>” defense.</p>
<h3 id="mOr9ko">The Dodgers: As Easy as 1, 2, 3</h3>
<p id="v1P3lS">The first batter of the MLB season will be 2023 NL MVP runner-up Mookie Betts. Things won’t get much easier for Padres starting pitcher Yu Darvish after that: Next up will be 2023 AL MVP Shohei Ohtani, followed by 2023 NL MVP bronze medalist Freddie Freeman. That’s three of the top eight projected hitters in MLB, batting back-to-back-to-back (or as John Sterling <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sterling_(sportscaster)#:~:text=For%20back%20to%20back%20home%20runs%2C%20especially%20homers%20from%20opposite%20sides%20of%20the%20plate%2C%20Sterling%20references%20Harry%20Belafonte%27s%20%22Zombie%20Jamboree%22%20by%20saying%20%22it%27s%20a%20back%20to%20back!%20...%20and%20a%20belly%20to%20belly!%22">might</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/JSterlingCalls/status/1158905137815085057">say</a>, back-to-back and belly-to-belly). They’ve already combined for 11 Silver Slugger awards, 17 All-Star selections (without double-counting Ohtani’s <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/shohei-ohtani-two-way-all-star-for-3rd-straight-year">two-way appearances</a>), and 18 top-10 MVP finishes, and all three players remain at or near the peak of their powers at the plate.</p>
<p id="XMkpN4">Both Betts and Ohtani have leadoff experience, and all three have hit second and third, so the Dodgers can’t really go wrong with these offensive forces in any order. But Betts has <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=bettsmo01&year=Career&t=b#all_lineu">batted</a> best and most often in the top spot, Ohtani has historically <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=ohtansh01&year=Career&t=b#all_lineu">excelled</a> as a no. 2 hitter, and Freeman has <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=freemfr01&year=Career&t=b#all_lineu">hit third</a> more often than not, so Betts-Ohtani-Freeman it is. That alignment allows Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to stack speed at the top of his lineup—though the slower Freeman, who somehow <a href="https://pebblehunting.substack.com/p/the-king-of-improving">keeps improving</a>, has become <a href="https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-talk-about-freddie-freeman-baserunner-extraordinaire/">a</a> <a href="https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-baserunners-that-sprint-speed-overlooks/">great</a> <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/how-freddie-freeman-became-dodgers-leading-base-stealer">base runner</a>—while ensuring that the free-swinging Ohtani gets plenty of pitches to hit. “As a manager, you start trying to formulate a lineup and see how it looks on paper,” Roberts <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/mookie-betts-shohei-ohtani-freddie-freeman-dodgers-batting-order">said</a> last month. “You get a big glow on your face when you look at Ohtani, Freeman, and Betts.” Opponents, presumably, get big frowns on their faces instead.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman could be the best offensive trio since ________? <a href="https://t.co/WQkh6JVCYP">pic.twitter.com/WQkh6JVCYP</a></p>— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) <a href="https://twitter.com/MLBNetwork/status/1769774541817921849?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 18, 2024</a>
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<p id="wePBs3">FanGraphs’ depth chart projections—which blend the outputs of the ZiPS and Steamer systems—peg Betts (142), Ohtani (141), and Freeman (141) for wRC+ marks above 140, or 40 percent above the MLB average. Other <a href="https://fantasy.fangraphs.com/2023-projection-systems-comparison-a-game-theory-approach/">high-performing</a> projection systems, such as ATC and THE BAT X, have them higher (146/147 for Betts, 155/161 for Ohtani, and 145/143 for Freeman), though even those more optimistic marks may seem conservative compared to their actual stats last season (167, 180, and 163, respectively). All three will be 30 or older by this year’s All-Star Game, so the algos expect some age-related decline, but these forecasts for modest dips aren’t insults; few hitters of any age have true-talent estimates as high.</p>
<p id="zWCrkm">This spring, the Dodgers’ dynamic trio has largely <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/spring-training?pos=all&level=0&lg=33&stats=bat&qual=20&type=1&team=&season=2024&seasonEnd=2024&org=&ind=0&splitTeam=false&players=&sort=19,1&pageitems=2000000000&pg=0">lived up to</a> its billing. Ohtani, who’s barred from the mound as he rehabs from September elbow surgery—don’t worry, the Dodgers have the game’s projected <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=SP">top rotation</a> (and a <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=RP">top-five projected bullpen</a>) without him—has slashed .500/.577/.909 (286 wRC+) amid the publicity surrounding his <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68571877">newly public love life</a>. Betts has been nearly as locked in, slashing .441/.513/.618 (207 wRC+). Only Freeman, at a comparatively pedestrian .281/.324/.625, has been below the 140 wRC+ mark, albeit barely (he’s sitting at 135, not counting his single, double, and homer in an exhibition game against the KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes on Saturday).</p>
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<p id="tSgsl1">One can imagine many more games like the Dodgers’ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQBENhVt6z4">March 3</a> <a href="https://www.mlb.com/gameday/rockies-vs-dodgers/2024/03/03/748126/final/summary/all">victory</a> against the Rockies, in which Betts, Ohtani, and Freeman kicked off the bottom half of the first with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7OkHxuS0FYQ">three consecutive singles</a>, and the trio ultimately combined for seven of the team’s 11 hits and five of its seven runs scored. Cleanup hitter Will Smith is going to drive in a ton of runs this season—unless Freeman keeps <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIqxeVel1OE">clearing the bases himself</a>. Plus, L.A.’s lineup (<a href="https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/89066/between-the-lines-in-jackson-merrill-san-diego-padres-ignore-imperiled-depth/">unlike San Diego’s</a>) isn’t just a few stars followed by a bunch of scrubs. Even the worst of the team’s projected regulars against righties project to be average—and that’s assuming that the pitchers who face them aren’t exhausted by running the gauntlet of Betts, Ohtani, and Freeman. That’s a lot of offense for Dodgers lovers to look forward to and Dodgers haters to dread. </p>
<p id="crbzN2">Roberts said the Betts-Ohtani-Freeman sequence isn’t “set in stone,” but as long as the three stars are healthy, they’ll likely be batting consecutively in some order. Let’s assume that each of them avoids serious injuries, qualifies for the batting title (by making at least 3.1 plate appearances per team game, or 502 in a 162-game season), and plays up to his projection, producing a wRC+ of 140 or higher. Where would the three of them rank among the most potent trios ever, and among the most intimidating tops of a lineup?</p>
<p id="Jqpmwq"><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aSTfAr_2POndKzq5YKjwRs1CyauroGt4h_5c480sfX8/edit?usp=sharing">Only</a> <a href="https://imgur.com/OkYgb6R">43</a> <a href="https://imgur.com/3tkwoHI">teams</a> have ever featured three consecutive hitters in a starting lineup who wound up qualifying for the batting title and finishing the season with at least a 140 wRC+. The table below lists the 10 teams that have ever run out such lineups in more than half of their games: </p>
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<p id="qtjxQD">The fabled Murderers’ Row Yankees—arguably the <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=al&lg=nl&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=1&startdate=&enddate=&season1=1871&season=2023&team=0%2Cts&sortcol=18&sortdir=default&pagenum=1">best offense ever</a>—never fielded a lineup with a 140 wRC+ trifecta, because Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were that 1927 team’s only 140 wRC+ hitters. But a different edition of the pre-integration Yankees, the 1942 club, leads the list. Joe DiMaggio batted cleanup in all 154 of the ’42 Bombers’ games, and Charlie “King Kong” Keller and Joe Gordon typically came next. The 2015 Blue Jays, who had José Bautista, Edwin Encarnación, and Josh Donaldson batting 1–3, 2–4, or 3–5 in 132 games, were the most recent team to join the group. Two of these teams, the 1953 Dodgers and 1976 Reds, boasted <em>more</em> than three qualifying 140 wRC+ hitters; the ’53 Dodgers sometimes had <em>five </em>such sluggers batting in a row.</p>
<p id="dgmPTD">Betts, Ohtani, and Freeman could propel the Dodgers to a new record if they started more than 145 games in consecutive spots in the order; 137 is the postwar, post-integration number to beat. If they bat in order enough times to place anywhere on this list, though, that would bode well. Every one of the teams in that table finished first or tied for first in wRC+ among AL/NL offenses (pitcher hitting excluded). Collectively, they averaged 96.4 wins, with the worst of them, the ’96 Mariners, going 85-76.</p>
<p id="q55qjo">What makes the Dodgers’ offensive standouts <em>extra</em>-extraordinary is <em>where</em> in the lineup they bat: at the top. Historically, the <em>heart</em> of the order has been the likeliest location for a run of three 140 wRC+ hitters: Consecutive sluggers have been less common from 1–3 than from 3–5, 4–6, or 2–4. Until fairly recently, leadoff batters (and even no. 2 hitters) tended to be lighter-hitting, speed-and-bat-control types. Betts is an anomaly; in fact, mid-career Mookie has the <a href="https://stathead.com/sharing/Commn">highest</a> career OPS of any leadoff batter—unless we lower the plate-appearance threshold to 2,500, in which case his contemporary Ronald Acuña Jr. <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/best-mlb-leadoff-seasons-ever">edges him out</a>. </p>
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<p id="p9v57Z">(In case you’re curious, the three 6–8 examples are Campanella-Hodges-Furillo and Hodges-Campanella-Furillo from those stacked ’53 Dodgers, and Boston’s David Ortiz, Bill Mueller, and Trot Nixon on July 25, 2003.)</p>
<p id="TliM3f">Thanks to the scarcity of past top-of-the-lineup mashers, the Dodgers could become only the 10th team ever to bat qualified, 140 wRC+ hitters 1-2-3 in <em>any</em> number of games. Two of those teams, including Freeman’s 2020 Braves, played during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when the 60-game schedule made the feat easier to accomplish. Only one team has ever pulled off this trick with any regularity: the second World Series winner of Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine era. The Dodgers could potentially surpass the ’76 Reds’ record with more than two months’ worth of games to spare.</p>
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<p id="iEeKeM">Some of the 140 wRC+ qualifiers on previous teams weren’t really name-brand batters; they were good-but-not-great players who were having career years (like Nixon and Mueller). If these highly decorated Dodgers climb the lists above, it won’t be a fluke. Injuries, underperformance, and/or lineup reshuffling could derail the Dodgers’ pursuit of an unprecedented trio. On paper, though, the top of this lineup packs as powerful a 1-2-3 punch as any we’ve ever seen. The chance to see Betts, Ohtani, and Freeman make a first impression from afar might be worth waking up for.</p>
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<h3 id="35fxbw">The Padres: Why Don’t They Build the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/87386-if-the-black-box-flight-recorder-is-never-damaged-during">Whole Defense</a> Out of Shortstops?</h3>
<p id="Irhitu">When Mookie leads off for L.A. this week—and for the <a href="https://theathletic.com/5327581/2024/03/08/dodgers-mookie-betts-shortstop-gavin-lux/">foreseeable</a> <a href="https://dodgersnation.com/dodgers-gavin-lux-wont-go-back-to-shortstop-in-2024/2024/03/16/">future</a>—he’ll be listed as a shortstop. That wasn’t how the Dodgers drew things up, but for the second straight season, Betts has been pressed into service at a premium position he’s hardly played professionally. Last year, Mookie moonlighted at short in place of an injured Gavin Lux; this year, the natural second baseman swapped positions with Lux when the once-presumptive shortstop threw erratically in spring training. Betts’s attempt to master a demanding position fairly late in his career is a compelling full-season subplot (and a <a href="https://effectivelywild.fandom.com/wiki/Episode_1998:_Congrats_on_the_Paternity_Leave#Stat_Blast:~:text=Late%2Dcareer%20shortstops,and%20PR%20games.">testament</a> <a href="https://neilpaine.substack.com/p/mookie-betts-is-attempting-an-unprecedented">to</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/SlangsOnSports/status/1766234791106457824">his</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/SlangsOnSports/status/1767278549193326618">skill</a>), but it’s <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/what-to-expect-from-mookie-betts-at-shortstop">not guaranteed</a> to go well. The problem for the Dodgers is that they don’t have enough shortstops. Which is ironic, considering that their adversaries in Seoul have nothing <em>but</em> shortstops.</p>
<p id="Du8uhU">Preller has hoarded shortstops for years. Perhaps he’s haunted by what might have been: A few months into Preller’s Padres tenure, the GM traded Trea Turner to the Nationals. And as Turner established himself in D.C. as one of baseball’s best shortstops, <em>Padres</em> shortstops struggled, collectively ranking <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&team=0%2Cts&pos=ss&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2015&season=2015">29th</a> in WAR in 2015 and <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&team=0%2Cts&pos=ss&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2016&season=2016">dead</a> <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&team=0%2Cts&pos=ss&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2017&season=2017">last</a> in 2016 and 2017. Not until 2020 did Padres shortstops get <em>good</em>, as Preller’s “love for up-the-middle talent”—as the <em>San Diego Union-Tribune </em><a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/sd-sp-padres-minor-league-shortstops-to-watch-20170921-story.html">put it</a> in 2017—paid off in Fernando Tatis Jr.’s first full season. Despite Tatis’s subsequent travails, Preller has since made damn sure that his team will never be short of shortstops again.</p>
<p id="qik8SP">When Preller signed Xander Bogaerts in December 2022 (having missed out on <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2022/12/06/trea-turner-342-million-offer-san-diego-padres-signed-phillies-report">bringing back Turner</a>), he <a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/story/2022-12-09/padres-introduce-newest-shortstop-xander-bogaerts">told a story</a> about a time in 2009—during Preller’s years with the Rangers—when he’d advised a scout, “You can never have too many shortstops.” In 2024, he’s truly testing that maxim. MLB.com beat writer AJ Cassavell <a href="https://www.mlb.com/padres/news/padres-xander-bogaerts-playing-strong-defense-at-shortstop">described</a> the Dads as “a team full of shortstops” <em>last</em> year, but Preller’s <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/xander-bogaerts-and-padres-future-at-shortstop#:~:text=Yep%2C%20A.J.%20Preller%20loves%20his%20shortstops">love</a> for players of the shortstop persuasion has never dictated his team’s defensive alignment to this extreme extent.</p>
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<p id="vjM15o">This spring, 20-year-old Jackson Merrill—one of <a href="https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2024-top-100-prospects/">four Jacksons</a> among FanGraphs’ leaguewide top 30 prospects—competed for the Padres’ big league gig in center field. Merrill’s upper-level experience is limited to 46 games in Double-A last season, and he’s never played center field professionally. In the minors, he was—yes, you guessed it—a shortstop. So what? As Preller <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/a-j-preller-gets-creative-on-2023-padres-roster">said</a> in December 2022, the Padres’ shortstop surplus “leads to some creative conversations in the room about where guys are going to play.” Merrill’s athleticism led to creative conversations about center. Earlier this month, <em>Baseball America</em>’s J.J. Cooper<em> </em><a href="https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/the-padres-are-set-to-field-a-lineup-of-shortstops/">noted</a> that “the Padres’ reliance on shortstops is extremely unusual. If Merrill makes the team as a regular center fielder, the Padres could regularly field a lineup with a converted shortstop at every position other than catcher.”</p>
<p id="E9VPDy">Well, Merrill <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/03/padres-to-name-jackson-merrill-opening-day-center-fielder.html">made the team</a> as its starting center fielder, giving the Padres shortstops in center, left (Jurickson Profar), right (Tatis), first (Jake Cronenworth), second (Bogaerts), third (Graham Pauley, <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/padres-graham-pauley-will-be-on-roster-for-korea-series/">for now</a>, and eventually Manny Machado), and, of course, short (South Korea native Ha-Seong Kim, who <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/ha-seong-kim-homers-in-korea-exhibition-game">homered twice</a> on Monday in his homeland return). So just how unusual <em>is </em>the Padres’ shortstop menagerie?</p>
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<p id="TQKetE">If we went back far enough—college, high school, Little League—we’d probably find that the majority of major leaguers played shortstop at some point. Shortstop is home to the most athletic infielders, and most major leaguers were likely among the most athletic players in their neighborhoods, cities, or schools. In the pro ranks, however, shortstop is a more exclusive assignment (outside of San Diego, at least). The table below shows the all-time percentage of major league non-pitchers who appeared at each position in at least one game, more than one game, or 10 games or more in the majors or affiliated minors.</p>
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<p id="5KXUIU">These numbers loosely track the difficulty of playing each position, as indicated by the Bill James concept of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_spectrum">defensive spectrum</a>. The only positions played by a lower percentage of big league non-pitchers than shortstop are catcher and, unsurprisingly, pitcher. Players with shortstop experience are physically capable of shifting to almost any other position, but relatively few players shift <em>to</em> shortstop from anywhere else. (Even Betts was drafted as a shortstop.) By contrast, it’s common to slide <em>down</em> the defensive spectrum to corner positions, which inflates their rates.</p>
<p id="4slAkU">That table reinforces that fielding an all-shortstop team is tough—unless, like Preller, you stock up on shortstops on purpose. But the Padres’ seven-shortstop defense won’t be the first of its kind. By coincidence, the number of teams that have started seven defenders with previous pro shortstop experience in a game (44) is almost identical to the number of teams that have batted three qualified, 140 wRC+ hitters consecutively (43). However, while there have been almost 2,300 total team games with 140 wRC+ hitters batting back-to-back-to-back, only <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BVP1BsKu_haX6siFZWLjsLQRi6pX0MKM_dV7Y-2ymCw/edit?usp=sharing">428 games</a> in the Baseball-Reference database satisfy the seven-shortstop condition. And only 15 teams have done it more than five times in a season.</p>
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<p id="ZSrpYP">Even that somewhat overstates the ease of finding comps for these Padres. The caveat is that the vast majority of those games qualified thanks to one or more players who’d logged the odd game at shortstop—for instance, Kansas City’s Alex Gordon, whose six innings at short in one game in 2007 snuck 11 Royals lineups from 2018 and 2019 into our sample. If we require at least 10 games of shortstop experience for each player, that already small sample dwindles down to 55 games. Only two teams, the 1903 Brooklyn Superbas (23 games) and the 1988 Detroit Tigers (18 games), managed more than four such games apiece.</p>
<p id="OtkSSr">So no, it’s not <em>that </em>uncommon for a team to play seven shortstops. Last year, the Rockies did it once thanks to first baseman Nolan Jones (five games at shortstop in rookie ball), third baseman Ryan McMahon (two previous MLB games at shortstop), and right fielder Kris Bryant (two previous MLB games), and the Twins did it once courtesy of center fielder Michael A. Taylor (19 games in rookie ball). In 2022, the Red Sox did it once thanks to first baseman Bobby Dalbec (two previous MLB games) and third baseman Rafael Devers (one previous MLB game), and in 2021, the Dodgers did it thanks to first baseman Albert Pujols (two MLB <em>innings</em> at shortstop, way back in 2002). But to do it with what Cooper called “legitimate” shortstops? That’s special.</p>
<p id="dETQPU">Pauley has played only one pro inning at shortstop, in A ball in 2022. But if, as expected, Machado replaces Pauley when his <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/manny-machado-undergoes-elbow-surgery">surgically repaired</a> right elbow permits him to make the throw from third, then Merrill would be the Padres’ least-experienced shortstop, with 178 pro games to his name. (Unless Profar gets <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/03/padres-tommy-pham-discussing-one-year-deal.html">bumped by Tommy Pham</a>, who hasn’t played short since his 37 games there in rookie ball.) That’s a super-high minimum for the weakest shortstop link on a seven-shortstop team. In fact, no other major league game meets that standard. The only one that comes close is the Orioles’ lineup on <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TBA/TBA201206010.shtml">June 1, 2012</a>, when first baseman Mark Reynolds—who played short 135 times in A-ball or below, and once in the Arizona Fall League—had the lowest total of Baltimore’s past or present shortstops. And for those O’s, that seven-shortstop defense was a one-time thing. The Padres could double that total before they come back to California, and if Merrill makes good, they could become the most shortstop-y team of all time.</p>
<p id="T8CI8t">Except that Preller’s all-shortstop plan is missing one component: a catcher. Austin Nola, who caught for the Padres from 2020 through 2023, is a former minor league shortstop, but he’s on the Royals now. Neither of the Padres’ current catchers, Luis Campusano and Kyle Higashioka, has played anywhere except backstop or first base. Here, then, the Padres’ shortstop collection can be beaten, because there have been 203 major league games in which <em>all eight</em> non-pitcher defenders had “pro shortstop” on their résumés.</p>
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<p id="2aBr9V">Finally, though I hate to break it to Preller, there have been 43 big league games—all for the 1901 or 1903 Superbas, or the 1902 White Sox—where the starting <em>pitcher</em> was a former shortstop, too. Kudos to <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/donovbi01.shtml">Bill Donovan</a>, <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/schmihe01.shtml">Henry Schmidt</a>, and <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/griffcl01.shtml">Clark Griffith</a>, respectively, for making it possible for those teams to start shortstops <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down">all the way down</a>. The bad news for Preller: His measly seven shortstops come up, well, short. The good news: He still has something to aim for. It’s good to have goals.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="42zkYL">The Padres’ fetish for shortstops probably makes more sense than, say, the Marlins’ <a href="https://twitter.com/CTowersCBS/status/1756750840960823666">quest</a> to corner the market on second basemen. Admittedly, it may not be the most <em>efficient </em>approach to team-building: The Padres signed Bogaerts to an 11-year contract less than a year and a half ago, and they’ve <a href="https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/padres-moving-xander-bogaerts-off-shortstop-an-admission-of-280m-mistake">already moved him</a> off the position where his bat provided the greatest value. Still, the nice thing about shortstops is that their gloves are good everywhere. The Padres were one of the majors’ best defensive teams in 2023, thanks in large part to Tatis’s superlative play in right. And though the Dodgers are deeper in most respects, they may end up envying the Padres’ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_National_Stockpile">strategic shortstop stockpile</a>.</p>
<p id="7O3GgM"><em>Thanks to </em><a href="https://twitter.com/kennyjackelen"><em>Kenny Jackelen</em></a><em> of Baseball Reference and </em><a href="https://twitter.com/rsnelson23"><em>Ryan Nelson</em></a><em> for research assistance.</em></p>
<aside id="OiOdPi"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2024/3/19/24105728/mlb-opening-day-games-2024-dodgers-padres-seoul-series-koreaBen Lindbergh2024-03-11T21:15:28-04:002024-03-11T21:15:28-04:00How ‘Helldivers 2’ Broke the Live-Service Slump
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<figcaption>Arrowhead Game Studios</figcaption>
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<p>Ben, Steve, and Matt join to talk about the co-op shooter before giving out some recommendations for lower-profile games to play</p> <div id="KJPnOn"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/2KsUNfz0IT4tCbfwd4jHjI?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" allow="clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="e58cWR"><br><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/2KsUNfz0IT4tCbfwd4jHjI?si=a4a4cd52c44048ca">Are you ready, Helldivers?!</a> Ben, Steve Ahlman, and Matt James discuss how online co-op shooter <em>Helldivers 2</em> became a surprise sensation and feel-good gaming story by building a new model for live-service storytelling and community (to go with great gameplay). Then they offer five rapid-fire recommendations for recently released, lower-profile games to play between blockbusters (58:00).</p>
<p id="pB9Oxl">Host: Ben Lindbergh<br>Guests: Steve Ahlman and Matt James<br>Producer: Devon Renaldo<br>Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal</p>
<p id="yZ40OD"><strong>Subscribe:</strong> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3z9QIZzDR4o34uBBbsxb0z">Spotify</a> / <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ringer-verse/id1558211702">Apple Podcasts</a></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2024/3/11/24098076/helldivers-2-broke-the-live-service-slumpBen LindberghSteve Ahlman2024-03-06T07:53:34-05:002024-03-06T07:53:34-05:00Expanding the ‘Dune’ Universe
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<figcaption>Getty Images/Warner Bros./Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>How long can Warner Bros. and Legendary ride the sandworm of success that is ‘Dune’? It may depend on how much money that sandworm can ingest—and how long auteur director Denis Villeneuve plans on sticking around.</p> <p id="9BhvPF">Not so long ago, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/dune"><em>Dune</em></a><em> </em>was dormant IP. In March 2011, Paramount’s option on the classic sci-fi novel expired after a failed four-year attempt to make a movie adaptation. “Right now, <em>Dune</em> has no commitments or attachments,” <a href="https://deadline.com/2011/03/paramount-ends-4-year-attempt-to-turn-frank-herberts-dune-into-film-franchise-116174/">said</a> producer Richard P. Rubinstein, who had held the rights to Frank Herbert’s bestselling book since 1996. Rubinstein<em> </em>was willing to try again and looked for a long-term relationship, but <em>Dune</em>’s free-agent phase would persist until Legendary Entertainment acquired the rights in November 2016.</p>
<aside id="NdcxeH"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Is Denis Villeneuve Willing ‘Dune: Part Three’ Into Existence? ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/dune/2024/3/1/24086949/dune-part-two-denis-villeneuve-trilogy-frank-herbert"},{"title":"The ‘Dune: Part Two’ Exit Survey","url":"https://www.theringer.com/dune/2024/3/4/24090057/dune-part-two-exit-survey"},{"title":"Let’s Talk About Magic Dick Theory in ‘Dune’","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2024/2/28/24085259/dune-part-two-magic-dick-theory-paul-atreides-chosen-one-messiah"}]}'></div></aside><p id="WWd3OU">Plenty of production companies must regret not pouncing on the property when it was available. Unlike the Kwisatz Haderach, though, Hollywood deal brokers <a href="https://variety.com/2018/film/opinion/william-goldman-dies-appreciation-1203030781/">can’t foresee</a> all possible futures, and thus the valuable-in-retrospect rights lay fallow for five-plus years. Not <em>every </em>previous screen adaptation of <em>Dune </em>had been disastrous: 1992’s <em>Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty</em> was a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/dune-2-video-game-battle-for-arrakis-frank-herbert-b2504137.html">revolutionary</a> real-time strategy video game, and Rubinstein’s two <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert%27s_Dune">Emmy-winning</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert%27s_Children_of_Dune">miniseries</a> for the Sci-Fi Channel in the early 2000s were well regarded enough. But the breakout didn’t come until Legendary pulled a Paul Muad’Dib and charted <a href="https://deadline.com/video/dune-part-two-new-trailer-timothee-chalamet-zendaya/">a narrow way through</a> the thicket of developmental problems that had derailed <em>Dune</em> adaptations for <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/looking-back-at-all-the-utterly-disastrous-attempts-to-adapt-dune.html">decades</a>: Hand Herbert’s text<em> </em>to <a href="https://twitter.com/CultureCrave/status/1760439880088498630">undefeated</a> director (and <em>Dune</em>head) Denis Villeneuve and give him the resources and screen time to do justice to the story.</p>
<p id="9xvRdx">That approach has paid off: Villeneuve’s second <em>Dune </em>movie, <em>Dune: Part Two</em>, <a href="https://www.boxofficepro.com/weekend-box-office-dune-part-two-seizes-control-of-theaters/#:~:text=Dune%3A%20Part%20Two%20scored%20an%20%E2%80%9CA%E2%80%9D%20CinemaScore%20and%205%20out%20of%205%20on%20ComScore%E2%80%99s%20PostTrak%2C%20a%20good%20indication%20that%20word%20of%20mouth%20will%20keep%20the%20movie%20holding%20steady%20in%20the%20weeks%20to%20come%2C%20as%20does%20the%20rare%20critical%20(94%25)%20and%20audience%20(95%25)%20favorability%20consensus%20on%20Rotten%20Tomatoes.">won over</a> critics, impressed the public, and <a href="https://variety.com/2024/film/news/dune-2-box-office-analysis-opening-weekend-timothee-chalamet-1235928762/">grossed</a> $82.5 million in North America and $182.5 million worldwide (not including China or Japan) in its opening weekend. That doubled the initial take of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2021/10/25/22744559/everything-you-need-to-know-about-dune">Villeneuve’s first <em>Dune </em>film</a>, which went on to gross $433 million globally after launching in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously in October 2021. <em>Part Two</em> may more than double that total, which would make it one of 2024’s highest-grossing releases. The arid landscape of <em>Dune </em>adaptations has become a green paradise.</p>
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<p id="k3eSt6">Potentially, at least. Reports of Legendary’s “<a href="https://deadline.com/2019/06/dune-the-sisterhood-series-warnermedia-streaming-service-1202630479/">comprehensive plans</a>” for a <em>Dune</em> multimedia empire<em> </em>sounded speculative and pie-in-the-sky in 2019, when <em>Dune</em>’s adaptation prospects were still stained by both David Lynch’s 1984 critical and commercial <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2021/10/20/22735151/dune-david-lynch-1984-movie">flop</a> and other adaptation <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/looking-back-at-all-the-utterly-disastrous-attempts-to-adapt-dune.html">attempts</a> that never made it to screens. In the wake of the new films’ success, that vision of a long-lasting, lucrative, trans-media franchise is starting to coalesce. At least one more movie is likely on the way. A small-screen prequel series about the Bene Gesserit, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune:_Prophecy"><em>Dune: Prophecy</em></a>, is scheduled to premiere on Max later this year. One video game, a new RTS called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune:_Spice_Wars"><em>Dune: Spice Wars</em></a>, came out last year, and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S-l7NySFsI">trailer</a> for another, an <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24090204/dune-awakening-survival-game-2024">open-world survival MMO</a> called <em>Dune: Awakening</em>, dropped this week. Accompanying those projects are all the off-screen trappings of major sci-fi and fantasy franchises: <a href="https://www.boom-studios.com/series/dune/">comics</a>, <a href="https://www.gf9games.com/dune/">board games</a> (a <em>Dune </em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(board_game)">tradition</a>), <a href="https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/dune-atreides-royal-ornithopter-10327">LEGO sets</a>, etc.</p>
<p id="33syJM">In 2020, the year before Villeneuve’s <em>Dune </em>debuted, longtime <em>Dune </em>fans Abu Zafar and Leo Wiggins started <a href="https://www.loreparty.com/show/gom-jabbar/about/"><em>Gom Jabbar: A Dune Podcast</em></a>, in anticipation of<em> </em>an uptick in the series’ popular profile. Even they underestimated the degree to which <em>Dune </em>would soon enter the zeitgeist. “Sci-fi fans have always loved <em>Dune</em>,” Zafar says. “But now we’re seeing <em>everyone</em> love <em>Dune</em>. … It’s been a sleeping giant just waiting to take over the world. Denis Villeneuve came along and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/duke-leto-atreides">woke up</a> the giant.”</p>
<p id="LCa5hD">After all the filmic false starts, the franchise has shed a great burden, like Baron Harkonnen when he wears his <a href="https://screenrant.com/dune-movie-baron-harkonnen-float-weight-explained/">suspensors</a>. The series seems to be ascending to the IP pantheon and belatedly taking its place alongside the other marquee mega-franchises that <em>Dune</em> <a href="https://www.fandom.com/articles/dune-influence-sci-fi-movies">directly</a> <a href="https://screenrant.com/ways-dune-influenced-future-sci-fi-movies/">influenced</a> <a href="https://www.wired.com/2020/06/geeks-guide-dune-influence/">or</a> <a href="https://screenrant.com/dune-frank-herbert-movies-similar-inspired/">indirectly</a> <a href="https://www.cbr.com/fantasy-sci-fi-franchises-influenced-by-dune/">rubbed</a> <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/english/hollywood/news/project-k-to-mad-max-sci-fi-movies-fans-think-are-heavily-inspired-by-dune/photostory/101989195.cms">off</a> on (<em>Star Wars</em> foremost among them). It’s only fair for the series that inspired so many others to take its turn on the throne. But will the expanded <em>Dune</em> universe (<em>Dune</em>-iverse?) last as long as <a href="https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Leto%27s_Peace">Leto’s Peace</a>, or is the franchise’s reign destined to be brief? Let’s snort some spice for prescience and ponder, point/counterpoint-style.</p>
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<p id="wnKmTE"></p>
<h4 id="KJGhna"><strong>Point: There’s so much source material.</strong></h4>
<p id="0HsSQH"><em>It’s a great story … but does it scale? </em>Fans might not be asking that, but the bean counters are. And, for better or worse, <em>Dune </em>does.</p>
<p id="w0obLm"><em>Dune </em>alone yielded <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2021/10/25/22744627/dune-exit-survey-timothee-chalamet-denis-villeneuve">two</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/dune/2024/3/4/24090057/dune-part-two-exit-survey">movies</a> with a combined running time of more than five hours—and that was after some substantial story compression. Herbert wrote <em>six </em>books in the series, some of them almost as long as (or even longer than) the first one. In theory, that’s enough to keep moviemakers busy for years to come. And when those narrative veins are tapped out, there are many more to mine: Herbert’s son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson have cowritten 17 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Herbert#Works">17!</a>) <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/g44927074/dune-books-in-order/">novels</a> set in the world of <em>Dune</em>—some prequels, some sequels, and some stories that fill in the gaps between Frank Herbert’s books. (<em>Prophecy </em>may or may not be based on one distant prequel, <em>Sisterhood of Dune</em>.) <em>Then</em> there are the novellas and short stories.</p>
<p id="1SupDj">To establish a thriving franchise, the content must flow. Not <em>too</em> freely, as the recent <em>Star Wars and </em>MCU slowdowns have illustrated, but steadily enough to keep people in the tent. Now that they’ve finally caught on, adaptations of <em>Dune </em>need never end.</p>
<h4 id="UednAV"><strong>Counterpoint: So much of that material is … strange.</strong></h4>
<p id="c28yBG"><em>Dune </em>may be a masterpiece, but the series gets progressively less accessible as its lore accumulates. The number of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/45935-dune">Goodreads ratings</a> gives us some indication of the precipitous decline in popular awareness of the series<em> </em>beyond the first book.</p>
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<p id="DyChhF">Granted, that first book is generally regarded as the bestselling sci-fi novel ever, so the post-<em>Dune</em> drop-off almost has to be steep. Plus, the sequels haven’t gotten the big-screen adaptation treatment yet. Still, that’s quite a plummet in popularity, even compared to other <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/43790-a-song-of-ice-and-fire">series</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/44420-the-dark-is-rising">of</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/117100-red-rising-saga">comparable</a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/45175-harry-potter">length</a>. The subsequent books aren’t bad; they all hover around a respectable average rating. It’s just that they’re “more … esoteric,” as Villeneuve diplomatically <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/denis-villeneuve-teases-dune-part-three-dune-messiah-exclusive/">put it</a>. Less diplomatically, they develop in a <a href="https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Weirding_Way">Weirding Way</a>. They also end in unfulfilling fashion, as Frank died less than a year after the publication of <em>Chapterhouse: Dune</em>, with some significant story lines still unresolved.</p>
<p id="de2KYn">After the first few books, the degree of adaptation difficulty <em>really </em>ramps up, thanks to titanic time jumps, decreased action, an enormous amount of inner monologue, and more. It’s been quite a while since my full-series read, but take it from a massive <em>Dune </em>fan: “Once you get into the latter books like <em>God Emperor of Dune</em> and beyond, the story truly takes the <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23716984/god-emperor-of-dune-movie-adaptation-denis-villeneuve">weirdest</a> (and horniest) of turns, and some of the ideas it explores start to become problematic,” Zafar says. <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24090250/bene-gesserit-sex-powers-frank-herbert-books-vs-movies">Horniness</a> alone <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/02/11/romantasy-explainer-maas-yarros/">needn’t be bad</a>, but <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/djfpoq/how_horny_was_frank_when_he_wrote_heretics/">in</a> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/mywt4t/did_frank_just_get_super_horny_before_writing_god/">this</a> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/comments/15zdmk4/what_the_actual_fuck_heretics_of_dune_by_frank/">case</a> … well, here’s a sample <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2ryWDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA436&ots=Wz-oEl8cIT&dq=%E2%80%9CThere%20was%20an%20adult%20beefswelling%20in%20his%20loins%20and%20he%20felt%20his%20mouth%20open%2C%20holding%2C%20clinging%20to%20the%20girder-shape%20of%20ecstasy.%22&pg=PA436#v=onepage&q&f=false">sentence</a>: “There was an adult beefswelling in his loins and he felt his mouth open, holding, clinging to the girder-shape of ecstasy.” (<a href="https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Beefswelling"><em>Beefswelling</em></a>.) And that’s from Book 3! Zafar continues, “Those later books in the series are a quagmire and are impossible to adapt in a way that makes for a hit blockbuster film and also stays true to the source material.”</p>
<p id="tjXLdV">Oh, and those almost innumerable Brian Herbert collabs? Their quantity denotes a lack of care in comparison to his father’s more moderate output. On the one hand, Brian’s liberal approach to building the <em>Dune </em>corpus—including coauthoring two novels that supposedly drew on his dad’s notes to take the place of the planned seventh and final <em>Dune</em> book that Frank was working on when he died—means that there are fewer hurdles to expanding the <em>Dune</em>-iverse than there have been with<em> </em>properties such as <em>Game of Thrones</em>, <em>Harry Potter</em>, or <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for quality control. “Brian has not exactly treated his father’s work with the same reverence that Christopher [Tolkien] <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2017/11/14/16648532/amazon-the-lord-of-the-rings-tv-series-prequel-ip">gave</a> to J.R.R Tolkien’s writings,” Zafar says. “As fans, we have many issues with Brian’s steering of the <em>Dune</em> ship, and his refusal to allow other creatives to add to the universe with original stories and art.”</p>
<p id="2BVwkr">Frank’s elder son’s decisions are extra relevant to <em>Dune</em>’s franchise future because Herbert probably hasn’t handed over the keys to Arrakis. <a href="https://deadline.com/2016/11/dune-frank-herbert-sci-fi-novel-legendary-rights-acquisition-1201858221/">Trade</a> <a href="https://variety.com/2016/film/news/legendary-dune-frank-herbert-1201923648/">reports</a> in 2016 suggested that Legendary had acquired the rights to <em>Dune</em> the novel, not <em>Dune </em>the all-encompassing IP. If that’s the case, then further <em>Dune </em>development would require the OK of Brian Herbert, and maybe additional negotiation. Legendary’s CEO, Josh Grode, lent credence to that notion this week when he <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/03/dune-part-two-box-office-opening-sparks-interest-in-part-three.html">said</a> that for a third film to come to fruition, “We have to have all creative stakeholders aligned and support the vision.” In response to an emailed question about the status of the rights to the rest of the saga, Frank’s grandson (and Brian’s nephew) <a href="https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Byron_Merritt">Byron Merritt</a>, who’s credited as an executive producer of both of Villeneuve’s films and <em>Prophecy</em>, wrote to me that “these kinds of deals are not made public so we cannot comment on them.” Neither Legendary nor the literary representative for the Herbert estate replied to similar inquiries.</p>
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<h4 id="toc4tV"><strong>Point: Villeneuve never misses.</strong></h4>
<p id="UHKOV3">Fine, the rights situation is somewhat murky. No matter: If additional deals are required, it seems safe to assume they’ll <a href="https://www.theringer.com/dune/2024/3/1/24086949/dune-part-two-denis-villeneuve-trilogy-frank-herbert">get done</a>. Shortly before Villeneuve’s first <em>Dune </em>movie premiered, WarnerMedia Studios and Networks chair and CEO Ann Sarnoff <a href="https://deadline.com/2021/10/dune-matrix-sopranos-sequels-hbo-max-theatrical-model-1234859504/">said</a>, “Will we have a sequel to <em>Dune</em>? If you watch the movie, you see how it ends. I think you pretty much know the answer to that.” If you watch <em>Dune: Part Two</em> and see how <em>it</em> ends—and also see the reception and earnings—you pretty much know the answer to whether the sequel will get its own sequel.</p>
<p id="2JUBva">Villeneuve has <a href="https://nerdist.com/article/dune-movie-trilogy-messiah-denis-villeneuve/">been</a> <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23712612/dune-how-many-parts-movies-sequels-messiah">talking</a> about his intention to adapt Frank Herbert’s second book, <em>Dune Messiah</em>,<em> </em>as his third <em>Dune </em>movie since before the first film came out. Last December, he <a href="https://variety.com/2023/film/news/denis-villeneuve-dune-3-script-almost-finished-1235829382/">said</a> the script was almost finished, and last week, composer Hans Zimmer <a href="https://variety.com/2024/artisans/news/dune-2-hans-zimmer-paul-chani-love-theme-gurneys-song-1235924690/">said</a> he’s already working on <em>Messiah</em>’s score. As Grode also said, addressing the potential for a third act of <em>Dune</em>, “If Denis gets the script right and he feels that he can deliver another experience on par with what we’ve just completed, then I don’t see why not.” The more bank the latest movie makes, the more we can bank on another one.</p>
<p id="a4z9AR">And after that? Well, <em>Dune </em>was once considered <a href="https://www.theringer.com/year-in-review/2021/12/22/22849412/the-end-of-unfilmable-ip-dune-foundation-wheel-of-time">unfilmable</a>, and look how that turned out. Maybe the more batshit books will be salvageable too. Wiggins, Zafar’s cohost, is more confident than Zafar that the weirder <em>Dune</em> novels could be overhauled, modernized, and made suitable for the screen. And as long as Villeneuve is at the helm, Wiggins isn’t worried: “He’s proven his vision, and in Denis we trust.”</p>
<h4 id="1vgHJq">
<strong>Counterpoint: Villeneuve might </strong><em><strong>be</strong></em><strong> missed.</strong>
</h4>
<p id="Sz1Qfu">Except there <em>is </em>some cause for concern, because as Wiggins is well aware, Villeneuve wants to stay at the helm for one more movie, at most. “<em>Dune Messiah</em> should be the last <em>Dune</em> movie for me,” he <a href="https://time.com/6589871/denis-villeneuve-dune-part-two-interview/">told</a> <em>Time Magazine </em>earlier this year, after previously saying to <em>Empire</em>, “If I succeed in making a trilogy, that would be the dream.” <em>Dune Messiah</em>, which completes Paul’s arc, is a much more compact book than <em>Dune</em>. If Villeneuve adapts it, he could declare his mission accomplished and walk away before the going gets gonzo in subsequent books.<em> </em>“I think he’s smart enough to let someone else make the mistake of trying to adapt them,” Zafar says.</p>
<p id="J0rHyD">If <em>Dune Messiah</em> does well, it’s almost certain that someone will <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2020/9/9/21357567/dune-box-scene-whats-inside-the-box">stick their hand</a> into that potentially painful trap—and whether the series escapes it unscathed could determine <em>Dune</em>’s long-term trajectory. As Wiggins notes, the acclaim for the new <em>Dune </em>duology has freed the IP from the prison of its past: “If a new <em>Dune</em> thing comes down the pipeline in 10 years, it won’t be greeted with ‘Oh, that Lynch movie from the ’80s?’” But the expectations summoned by a blockbuster can be as much of a millstone as the doubts caused by a bomb. Lynch’s <em>Dune</em> made it harder for Villeneuve’s to get made; Villeneuve’s <em>Dune </em>may make it harder for the next incarnation to satisfy freshly minted fans. “The success and staying power of the broader IP is going to be determined by the quality of non-Denis projects,” Wiggins says.</p>
<p id="FQUNQZ">The first of those scripted projects is <em>Prophecy</em>, which has already endured a good deal of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune:_Prophecy#Development">creative turmoil</a>. Villeneuve was supposed to direct <em>Prophecy</em>’s pilot, but his work on <em>Part Two</em> prevented him from doing so. In addition to multiple departures of directors and showrunners, the series has weathered casting swaps, a change in composer, and a new title to boot (changed from <a href="https://deadline.com/2022/10/dune-sisterhood-start-date-location-confirmed-hbo-max-legendary-prequel-series-1235145119/"><em>Dune: The Sisterhood</em></a>). The game of musical chairs only adds to the pressure on <em>Prophecy</em>, whose performance may be scrutinized as a bellwether of post-Denis <em>Dune</em>. What if it feels like a <a href="https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Ghola">ghola</a> of Villeneuve’s <em>Dune</em> instead of the genuine article?<em> </em>“Audiences (and the financiers watching from the shadows) will inevitably compare their experience watching it to the films, and if it’s bad, <em>Dune</em> will be more cemented as ‘the thing that’s good if Denis is doing it,’” Wiggins adds.</p>
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<h4 id="53S9dO">
<strong>Point: </strong><em><strong>Dune</strong></em><strong> is too good to go away.</strong>
</h4>
<p id="cqRla8">OK, but come on: Have you <em>seen Part Two</em>? How wholeheartedly audiences have embraced it? How hungry they are for more? The franchise<em> </em>may have gone 0-fer in its first few adaptation attempts, but like a skilled slugger who hit into hard luck, <em>Dune </em>was due. Maybe this isn’t a hot streak—it’s the series’ true talent finally made manifest, and a slump can’t kill its momentum any more than a stab by Feyd-Rautha could kill Paul. <em>Dune </em>has sandwormed its way into our lives to stay.</p>
<h4 id="sfk0U0"><strong>Counterpoint: On-screen, it’s still a fledgling franchise.</strong></h4>
<p id="Xq1IzG">The Fremen name for sandworms, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/dune-and-the-delicate-art-of-making-fictional-languages">Shai-Hulud</a>,<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/dune-and-the-delicate-art-of-making-fictional-languages"> derives from the Arabic</a> for “thing of eternity.” Once a worm is mature, it’s almost indestructible. But as <em>Part Two</em> taught us, a baby worm can be drowned by one woman. <em>Dune</em>’s origins are old, but it’s basically a baby as a box-office force.</p>
<p id="kxnUCj">Yes, <em>Dune</em> had a huge opening—which was roughly <em>half</em> as huge as the opening of 2019’s <em>Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker</em>, the much-maligned coda to the Skywalker saga. <em>Dune</em> may be “<em>Star Wars </em>for adults,” as Villeneuve once <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/dune-star-wars-comparisons-denis-villenueve-george-lucas-frank-herbert-novel-213642900.html">said</a>—echoing Frank Herbert’s mid-’80s <a href="https://www.etonline.com/what-dune-author-frank-herbert-said-about-the-1984-david-lynch-adaptation-flashback-174069">dismissal</a> of George Lucas’s series, which liberally lifted from his own—but the movie version didn’t capture the hearts of today’s adults when they were kids. The franchise has graduated from cult status, but it’s not yet unstoppable, and it could still stray from the <a href="https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Golden_Path">Golden Path</a>.</p>
<p id="jd0TFr">The combined brilliance of Frank Herbert and Denis Villeneuve was a winning formula, but <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2024/2/27/24084127/dune-part-two-movie-2024-box-office">a lot of other factors</a> conspired to make <em>Part Two</em> a sensation. A clear runway on the post-strikes schedule. A paucity of <em>Star Wars </em>and superheroes at the multiplex, and a hunger for “fresh” IP. (Which is several decades old, in <em>Dune</em>’s case,<em> </em>but so what? We’re in a <em>Barbie </em>world.) Some of the stars’ publicity boosts since they were cast. The three-hour <em>Oppenheimer</em>’s shifting of the movie-length Overton window. The <a href="https://www.theringer.com/dune/2024/3/1/24087134/dune-2-part-two-popcorn-bucket-uses-fleshlight">popcorn buckets</a>. Maybe there’s an alternate timeline where <em>Dune</em> lands like <em>Foundation</em>, an even older, formerly “unfilmable” sci-fi franchise <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/9/24/22691328/foundation-apple-review-isaac-asimov">that’s</a><a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/11/19/22790039/foundation-season-1-finale-review"> finally</a><a href="https://www.theringer.com/the-ringer-verse-podcast/2023/9/18/23879828/foundation-season-2-reactions-apple-tv"> flourished</a> on-screen without making much of a mark on the culture.</p>
<p id="HcN0Aa">In <em>Part Two</em>,<em> </em>Paul passes a series of tests to become a full-fledged Fremen. <em>Dune</em> adaptations face two tests now as they pledge the franchise fraternity. First, <em>Prophecy</em> has to succeed, which could be a stepping stone to a <a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/we-must-declare-jihad-against-a-i/">topical</a> series about the <a href="https://www.cbr.com/dune-butlerian-jihad-prequel-redeem-brian-herbert-books/">Butlerian Jihad</a>—demonstrating that <em>Dune </em>doesn’t need an Atreides—or an animated take on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune">Jodorowsky’s <em>Dune</em></a>. Then, the movies must maintain their momentum during what could be a lengthy break before <em>Dune Messiah</em>. Villeneuve wants to make <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/dune-part-two-denis-villeneuve-directing-timothee-chalamet-zendaya-1235837162/#:~:text=It%E2%80%99s%20not%20that,control%20over%20that.">another</a><a href="https://variety.com/2024/film/news/denis-villeneuve-dune-messiah-last-movie-no-dune-4-1235893013/#:~:text=If%20Villeneuve%20gets,something%20in%20between.%E2%80%9D"> movie</a>—a “<a href="https://uproxx.com/movies/denis-villeneuve-dune-part-2/#:~:text=But%20I%20think,an%20appetite%20also.">small movie</a>,” maybe, though I’m rooting for<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/denis-villeneuve-rendezvous-with-rama-movie-1235062337/"> <em>Rendezvous With Rama</em></a>—before he returns to <em>Dune</em>, both to give himself a break and to let Timothée Chalamet <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/03/denis-villeneuve-on-how-dune-survived-the-upheaval-of-hollywood#:~:text=I%20want%20to%20make%20part%20two%20as%20fast%20as%20possible%2C%20then%20I%20will%20wait%20a%20few%20years%E2%80%94until%20Timoth%C3%A9e%20Chalamet%20gets%20a%20bit%20older%E2%80%94to%20do%20the%20final%20installment.">age into</a> the older Paul of <em>Dune Messiah</em>. “For now, I’ve had my share of sand and I would love to take a little break from Arrakis before going back, if ever I go back,” Villeneuve <a href="https://uproxx.com/movies/denis-villeneuve-dune-part-2/">told</a> <em>Uproxx</em> last month.</p>
<p id="8jN1q5">Warner Bros. Discovery, which coproduces and distributes <em>Dune</em>, is all in on primo IP: In a November 2022 earnings call, president and CEO David Zaslav<a href="https://decider.com/2022/11/04/warner-bros-discovery-ceo-david-zaslav-jk-rowling-harry-potter/"> bragged</a> about the conglomerate’s lineup of “brands that are understood and loved everywhere in the world” and vowed to “focus on franchises.” On <em>last </em>year’s earnings call, he<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/q3-2023-warner-bros-discovery-041925339.html"> lamented</a>, “a lot of our most popular IP has been underused” and pledged to “maximiz[e] the value of our blue-chip franchises.”<em> </em>But maximizing value doesn’t always mean maximizing the number of prequels, sequels, and spinoffs. Maybe <em>Dune </em>seems so exciting because we haven’t had time to get tired of it. A little break from Arrakis is risky for franchise building, but so is too much time on Tatooine.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="tdClF6">“It’s clear <em>Dune</em>’s ability to captivate as an IP was undervalued since (and perhaps due to) Lynch’s divisive adaptation,” Wiggins says. Hollywood won’t make that mistake again. But it might make the mistake of following too little <em>Dune</em> with <a href="https://winteriscoming.net/posts/dune-prophecy-and-the-problem-with-expanding-the-dune-universe-01hpf1w6v727">too much</a>. Overwatering this seedling of a forever franchise could be the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2-i-must-not-fear-fear-is-the-mind-killer-fear-is">little-death that brings total obliteration</a>. “We’re about to be buried … up to our stillsuit nose plugs in <em>Dune</em> content,” Zafar says. With any luck, we won’t have to <em>hold</em> our noses to keep finding that fun.</p>
<aside id="VmPaxy"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2024/3/6/24091996/dune-part-two-dune-messiah-denis-villeneuve-franchise-future-prophecy-spinoffBen Lindbergh2024-03-04T19:08:09-05:002024-03-04T19:08:09-05:00‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’ Reactions
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<p>Ben is joined by Justin and Matt to dive deep into the game’s combat, music, and more!</p> <div id="GyhM2X"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/0BK7vWDjKNt8tHykpfzeO1?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" allow="clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="nmJvQJ"><br><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/0BK7vWDjKNt8tHykpfzeO1?si=d281a442bae44bb5">Words aren’t the only thing that tell people what you’re thinking</a> … but Ben, Matt James, and Justin Charity use words to give their spoiler-free thoughts on the sensational second installment in Square Enix’s <em>Final Fantasy VII</em> remake/sequel trilogy. Tap into the lifestream as the three-person podcast party breaks down the game’s open-world structure, combat, music, mini-games, and more. They close with their hopes for the final act of the trilogy and nominations for future remakes.</p>
<p id="im3pCU">Host: Ben Lindbergh<br>Guests: Justin Charity and Matt James<br>Producer: Devon Renaldo<br>Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal</p>
<p id="fF77hZ"><strong>Subscribe:</strong> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3z9QIZzDR4o34uBBbsxb0z">Spotify</a> / <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ringer-verse/id1558211702">Apple Podcasts</a></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2024/3/4/24090760/final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-reactions-square-enix-trilogyBen LindberghJustin Charity2024-02-29T09:41:41-05:002024-02-29T09:41:41-05:00“We’re Going to Become the Biggest Elsbeth”: Carrie Preston on ‘The Good Wife’ Favorite Elsbeth Tascioni’s New Spinoff
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<p>Preston stole scenes in ‘The Good Wife’ and ‘The Good Fight.’ Now she has her own series.</p> <p id="4dZYKr">When my colleague Katie Baker<a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/5/9/16038928/law-review-the-definitive-ranking-of-good-wife-attorneys-9f10985e57a7"> ranked attorneys</a> from <em>The Good Wife </em>in 2016, the inimitable Elsbeth Tascioni—a deceptively lethal litigator whose distractible manner, eccentric style, and deductive leaps helped her win every case via courtroom rope-a-dope—came in first (as she should have). “Let’s start talking spinoff,” Katie advised. Several years later, CBS accepted the suggestion.</p>
<p id="hkOhr4"><em>Elsbeth</em>, the new series centered on the fan-favorite recurring character that Carrie Preston played in 14 episodes of <em>The Good Wife</em> and five more of <em>The Good Fight</em>,<em> </em>premieres on CBS this Thursday (and will also stream a day later on Paramount+). Elsbeth is ever underestimated, but <em>Elsbeth</em> comes from too exalted a TV lineage for viewers not to have high expectations.<em> </em>Like the series it spun off from, <em>Elsbeth</em> was created by broadcast power couple Robert and Michelle King, who cowrote the premiere (which was directed by Robert). It stars Preston, Wendell Pierce, and Carra Patterson, alongside the usual lineup of great guest stars (Stephen Moyer, Jane Krakowski) and New York theatrical luminaries (Linda Lavin) who pack the call sheets of the Kings’<a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/6/29/22555414/evil-good-fight-robert-michelle-king-cbs-paramount-plus"> prestige stable</a> of network dramedies. With the Kings’ other active series,<a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/1/30/21114701/michelle-robert-king-evil-cbs-season-finale"> <em>Evil</em></a> (on which Preston’s husband, Michael Emerson, costars), returning for its fourth and final season in May, <em>Elsbeth </em>is a bid to keep a King creation on TV for the long haul. And it may well work, considering the series’ mainstream-accessible, tried-and-true, retro-chic construction.</p>
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<p id="13jMby">In the three episodes of <em>Elsbeth</em>’s 10-episode first season that were screened for critics, the series stands out as another well-written, well-acted entry in the King Televised Universe, though it differs from its small-screen cousins in several respects. Unlike <em>The Good Wife</em> and <em>Fight</em>, it’s a police procedural, not a legal procedural. It’s set in New York, not Chicago. It has a new showrunner, Jonathan Tolins (who worked with the Kings on <em>The Good Fight</em> and <em>BrainDead</em>). And though the series is premised on police wrongdoing—Elsbeth shadows overconfident NYPD detectives as part of a<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_decree"> consent decree</a>, correcting the cops and outmaneuvering murderers even as she secretly investigates precinct captain Wagner (Pierce) for corruption—it’s not nearly<a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/2/16/16038484/the-good-fight-leans-into-a-new-kind-of-politics-9b7b21b831fb"> as</a><a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/5/28/17401740/the-good-fight-cbs-donald-trump-christine-baranski"> political</a> as <em>The Good Fight</em>, for good or ill. It’s a largely lighthearted<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_detective_story"> howcatchem</a> in the <em>Columbo</em> and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/3/9/23630928/poker-face-season-1-finale-explained-charlie-cliff-sterling"><em>Poker Face</em></a> mold, powered by playful, NYC-centric setups and Preston’s appeal.</p>
<p id="DFAK1f">Preston, 56, has been a staple of stage and screen (both big and small) since the late 1990s, but <em>Elsbeth</em> is her first star vehicle. She also plays a supporting part in the Oscar-nominated <em>The Holdovers</em>, which makes this phase of her career, she says, “a wonderful time” that she feels “very, very humbled and grateful for.” Preston, who was nominated for two Emmys for playing Elsbeth on <em>The Good Wife</em> (and won once), spoke to <em>The Ringer</em> on the eve of <em>Elsbeth</em>’s premiere, almost 15 years after first bringing her iconic character to life.</p>
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<p id="EdXyEd"><strong>At what point in your history with this character did an Elsbeth spinoff start to seem conceivable?</strong></p>
<p id="Yhf4mj">I mean, I still am pinching myself, so it still doesn’t even feel real. We haven’t even aired yet. But Robert and Michelle King started asking me if I would be interested in such a thing at the end of <em>The Good Wife</em>. And then I said, “Of course. Of course I’d be interested in that.” And then the timing wasn’t right and then <em>The Good Fight</em> happened and I continued as a guest, happily, and also as a director, happily.</p>
<p id="6zlxgP">And then it was really during the lockdown, COVID, Robert and Michelle King, rather than watching all of the new shows that they hadn’t watched, they found that they were going back and rewatching episodes of <em>Columbo</em>. And that’s when they said to themselves, “OK, what if Elsbeth was like a Columbo character and we take the structure of <em>Columbo </em>and we trick it out for Elsbeth?” And then that got them excited. But that was four years ago. It takes a long time for these things to happen.</p>
<p id="WDHHHS"><strong>When the Kings first described Elsbeth to you, they told you to think Columbo, but you hadn’t really seen </strong><em><strong>Columbo</strong></em><strong> at the time.</strong></p>
<p id="7vTzP5">That’s right.</p>
<p id="mJWlwd"><strong>Have you done any procedural research for </strong><em><strong>this</strong></em><strong> show, or have you avoided other shows in the genre to preserve the idiosyncrasies of </strong><em><strong>Elsbeth</strong></em><strong>?</strong></p>
<p id="oGXsqS">I am a fan of police shows, and I’m a fan of those police procedurals anyway. And I did go back and watch some <em>Columbo</em> just to get inspired. The pace of those shows is so different than the shows that we make now, but this “howdunit,” not whodunit structure, I’ve wanted to re-familiarize myself with. But I’m somebody who really puts myself in the hands of the writing, and I just let that guide me. And luckily, we have great writers.</p>
<p id="s6q5qa"><strong>What challenges did you anticipate in translating Elsbeth from guest star to </strong><em><strong>star </strong></em><strong>star?</strong></p>
<p id="84ZlAB">Just the volume of the material is way greater than anything I’ve done on television. So just learning how to pace myself, just to maintain the “body budget,” learning one episode while I’m prepping another episode, while I’m shooting something, memorizing lines for something I’m going to do tomorrow while I’m shooting something else. All of which, my character talks a lot. So just learning and figuring out what that workflow is has been the biggest challenge.</p>
<p id="YQOT0G"><strong>Are you able to inhabit Elsbeth any differently or more effectively doing 10 in a row than you were when you were stepping into her shoes more sporadically and having to reconnect with the character?</strong></p>
<p id="kyUfUH">Yes. I mean, there’s a comfort because I’m doing it every day now. Before, I wouldn’t have played her for a year or two, and then I would have to plop down into it again and I would have to re-remember how I play her. And actually, probably if you look at the 20 episodes that I played her on <em>The Good Wife</em> and <em>The Good Fight</em>, you would probably see me finding it along the way and things changing as we go along based on what the writers were giving me. And now that we’ve taken her out of the world of the courtroom and put her in a police procedural, it means that she’s a little different. We’re seeing her in a different light. We’re seeing her in a different universe. So she’s getting used to it, too, although she turns out to be quite good at it.</p>
<div><aside id="W4qDix"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Return of the Kings","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/6/29/22555414/evil-good-fight-robert-michelle-king-cbs-paramount-plus"},{"title":"Law Review: The Definitive Ranking of ‘Good Wife’ Attorneys","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2016/5/9/16038928/law-review-the-definitive-ranking-of-good-wife-attorneys-9f10985e57a7"},{"title":"The Case for the Prestige Procedural","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2018/3/15/17122624/prestige-procedural-good-fight"},{"title":"An Exploration of the “Good” TV Universe","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/9/27/17909902/good-tv-universe-shows"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="JAkGzS"><strong>We know a bit about the biography of Elsbeth. She has a son, she has an ex-husband, and I’m sure we’ll learn more now that she’s getting her close-up. But I wonder whether the Kings ever told you anything about Elsbeth’s backstory that didn’t make it to the screen, or whether you invented your own history for her that may or may not be considered canonical.</strong></p>
<p id="c7EyqV">They haven’t shared with me anything other than what you and the other viewers have seen of her past. But I like to think of her as ... I mean, we’re going to learn in the series some things about, maybe not the easiest divorce. She loves her son so much, but he kind of keeps her at a distance a little bit. So we’re learning a little bit more about him that I didn’t know. So I feel like I’m learning as the viewers are.</p>
<p id="IYk6og"><strong>So you never invented in your head, here’s how she got the way she is?</strong></p>
<p id="GQimcv">I have my own things, but I think that they’re private, in a way. I think it’s best to kind of keep a little bit of that to yourself because if you share too much, then there’s no mystery, and I think it’s always good to have a little mystery in your work.</p>
<p id="KMX2lP"><strong>I think you and the Kings differ to some degree on this question, which comes up explicitly in the premiere. To what extent, if any, is Elsbeth putting on an act? Is the way she presents herself entirely authentic, or does she sometimes play up her quirkiness so that people will underestimate her? </strong></p>
<p id="XaBBIm">I do think that she is decidedly who she is. I think that she’s someone who’s extremely present. She approaches the world with a great amount of curiosity and wonder. She is also, in that, aware of how people receive her. I think there’s a vulnerability there that I like to always layer in. I think that always makes characters more interesting, when we see their vulnerabilities. She’s like a dog with a bone when she’s trying to solve a case, whether it be a legal case or, in this situation, a murder. She’ll do whatever it is that she needs to do to get what she needs to find justice or truth.</p>
<p id="ahxXny"><strong>How much of her mannerisms are in the script versus what you supply yourself, and has that ratio changed over time?</strong></p>
<p id="f8aJ6Q">They pretty much let me do all of that. They’ll say things in the script like, “Elsbeth Elsbeths,” as like a verb, and then, “Elsbeth ... Elsbeths.” In other words, “Carrie, do your thing, whatever you want to do there.” In the beginning, they used to write the word “pause.” And that was really the most fascinating thing for me with the character was “Well, what is that pause about? OK, I see all the words that I’m saying, but what am I thinking in that pause?” That, to me, was what unlocked the character. They don’t write the pause anymore. I just put it in wherever I feel it needs to be.</p>
<p id="vlMksj"><strong>What does Elsbeth have in common with Carrie, and in what ways do you differ?</strong></p>
<p id="2gMJgQ">We’re both very good at multitasking. Thankfully, I do have a multitasking skill because right now I’m being required to use it quite a bit in this job that I have, which I love. So I do have that in common with her. Her brain, however, is like Mensa-level genius. That’s not me. She has an insane photographic and also kind of energetic memory. Everything that she’s ever seen and experienced somehow ends up in the Rolodex of her brain, and that’s definitely something that I do not possess.</p>
<p id="AO0Is3"><strong>And as for her distinctive style—the tote bags, the blouses with bows—how did those become part of the character, and what, if anything, are they meant to convey?</strong></p>
<p id="PUb7WF">Well, we have the genius that is Dan Lawson doing our costume design. And he has been with <em>The Good Wife</em> and <em>Fight</em> universe since day one. So he came up with the look of the character, and we’ve really maintained that the whole time. When we went to do the pilot, Dan said to Robert and Michelle, “OK, she’s the lead now. I want to take her from the quirky character sidekick and I want to just give her a little bit more of an elegant silhouette, maybe [make her] more cosmopolitan. And they said, “Absolutely not. She remains exactly who she was.” And they are correct because that makes her stand out more. It also is such an expression of who she is. She’ll put on a blouse like that because it makes her feel good. By the way, a very expensive blouse. She has expensive taste. It might not be everybody’s taste, but she’s shopping at some high-end places. She’s done very well for herself in her job.</p>
<p id="yLrgrz">The thing that’s so great about the tote bags is those came in pretty early, and they just became appendages of Elsbeth. But we don’t ever really know what’s in them, and I love that. I like the mystery of not knowing what’s in them, because she’s carrying things around just in case. You never know when you might need, whatever, a protractor. Who knows what’s in there? I mean, I have my ideas of what’s in there, but we can put any prop in there that we want.</p>
<p id="1tCQ7u"><strong>In procedurals with a female lead, the main character is often—not always—an amateur detective. Monk and Columbo are homicide detectives, and Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot are professional full-time investigators the police sometimes seek out, whereas Jessica Fletcher and Miss Marple and Veronica Mars and Charlie Cale are amateurs and interlopers whose presence is sometimes resented, even though they’re clearly brilliant. Of course, you do have shows like </strong><em><strong>Castle</strong></em><strong> that flip the script, and then there’s </strong><em><strong>Cold Case</strong></em><strong> and </strong><em><strong>The Closer</strong></em><strong> and </strong><em><strong>Mare of Easttown</strong></em><strong> and others where the protagonist is on the inside. But I wonder what you make of that outsider detective tradition that Elsbeth is now a part of.</strong></p>
<p id="2c9zPj">I feel grateful that I’m in the company of those iconic characters, and Elsbeth has her own twist on that. I think it’s fun. I think it keeps the show fresh, but she’s figuring it out as she’s going along. Other characters underestimate her, and that becomes her superpower. I think there are a lot of women in this world who are underestimated and underappreciated, so I feel like I’m representing.</p>
<p id="H8vPKw"><strong>There’s a </strong><a href="https://thegoodwife.fandom.com/wiki/Cary_Agos"><strong>Cary Agos</strong></a><strong> name-drop in the premiere. Should viewers expect any more substantive crossovers from the </strong><em><strong>Good Wife</strong></em><strong> and </strong><em><strong>Fight</strong></em><strong> universe at some point in the series?</strong></p>
<p id="QmLUSQ">I think Robert and Michelle put that in there as a wink, wink, one little Easter egg for the fans. I think with this show, we are going to probably get a whole new audience that never even saw those two shows. That’s what we’re hoping, and the fact that it’s set in New York. Right now, there’s no plans to bring in anybody from those two universes. But maybe if we’re lucky enough to get another season, and if we’re lucky enough to have one of those actors be available, we could maybe get them to reprise their role for a moment.</p>
<p id="OSNstA"><strong>I want to pitch you on a professional and personal crossover for you and your husband, because you’ve </strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Preston#:~:text=Preston%20has%20worked,character%2C%20Harold%20Finch."><strong>appeared together</strong></a><strong> in previous projects: Elsbeth Tascioni investigates Leland Townsend from </strong><em><strong>Evil</strong></em><strong>.</strong></p>
<p id="wNnSNt">Oh, wouldn’t that be so good?</p>
<p id="RvfuSz"><strong>Who’d have the upper hand?</strong></p>
<p id="w5XqC0">Michael and I have talked about that and how wonderful it would be to see those two characters go head-to-head. I think the guy who has the demon or the devil on speed dial might have something on Elsbeth. But I feel like Elsbeth might have some angels on speed dial. We could duke it out.</p>
<p id="GHAT5P"><strong>Lastly, the Elsbeth name has been a big part of both the series and its marketing. I looked up Elsbeth in the Social Security Administration names </strong><a href="https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/"><strong>database</strong></a><strong>, and it has not placed in the top 1,000 girls names at any point since 1900.</strong></p>
<p id="DAvKMi">It has not.</p>
<p id="5j3Yzc"><strong>Have you met many Elsbeths? Have you inspired any </strong><em><strong>new</strong></em><strong> Elsbeths?</strong></p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="4y3MpI">Some fans have told me that they’ve named their kids Elsbeth, so that’s truly, wow, what an honor. But I think when you go to Google and you put famous Elsbeths, the first one is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsbeth_Schragm%C3%BCller">Elsbeth Schragmüller</a>, who was a German spy in World War I. So it’s our goal on the TV show <em>Elsbeth</em>, we’re going to take that Elsbeth Schragmüller down. We’re going to become the biggest Elsbeth, if we have anything to do with it.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tv/2024/2/29/24086536/carrie-preston-elsbeth-cbs-interview-good-wife-good-fightBen Lindbergh2024-02-20T06:30:00-05:002024-02-20T06:30:00-05:00‘True Detective: Night Country’ and the Curse of the Six-Episode Season
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<p>Did ‘True Detective: Night Country’ make a mistake by pursuing a six-episode season? We ran the numbers on the least successful season lengths.</p> <p id="0yjCAS">In the finale of <em>True Detective: Night Country</em>, Beatrice, a former cleaning woman at the Tsalal Arctic Research Station, makes a quasi-confession to detectives Liz Danvers and Evangeline Navarro. “It’s always the same story with the same ending,” she says. “Nothin’ ever happens. So we told ourselves a different story, with a different ending.”</p>
<p id="wveK1y"><em>Night Country</em> told a different story, with a different ending, than the three <em>True Detective</em> seasons that preceded it. <em>This</em> story lasted six episodes instead of eight. And <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2024/2/18/24076909/true-detective-night-country-season-4-episode-6-finale-recap">its</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2024/2/18/24076958/true-detective-night-country-season-4-episode-6-series-finale-exit-survey">ending</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2024/2/18/24077059/true-detective-night-country-finale-recap-review">was</a>, well, divisive, yielding some effusive praise but plentiful pans. No one can complain, like Bee, about nothing happening; if anything, <em>too much</em> happened, as Danvers and Navarro found the suspect they’d been searching for all season, (sort of) solved eight murders, shut down the mine that was polluting Ennis, and (probably?) survived multiple life-threatening predicaments. All of that and more had to happen in one supersized season-ender because there were so many mysteries still unsolved and no more episodes left in which to tell the tale. A day after it aired, the finale sported the season’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?series=tt2356777&release_date=2024-01-01,2024-12-01&sort=user_rating,asc&count=250">lowest</a> average IMDb user rating.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">True Detective s4 only having six episodes is some bs. Every other season has had 8 episodes, wtf?? They needed more time to make the story make sense. It sucks that they have such a cool plot point and such messy execution that just seemed rushed and didn’t really make sense</p>— scrolling with the homies (@muensterchzluvr) <a href="https://twitter.com/muensterchzluvr/status/1759472291400896943?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2024</a>
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<p id="wJnIQ6"><em>Night Country </em>has company, in more ways than one. The six-episode season, which was once almost unheard of in Hollywood, has become increasingly common. And the format’s track record is checkered enough that there is some cause to be concerned when a series gets a six-episode order. I’m not saying there’s no place for six-episode seasons in the modern American TV landscape. I’m just gently suggesting that maybe the trend has been taken too far.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The finale of TRUE DETECTIVE: NIGHT COUNTRY isn't awful but it's definitely pretty disappointing. It has this weird feel to it where things feel simultaneously too neat and too ambiguous. Definitely left me wondering if the six episode count was a mistake.</p>— Aaron Murray (@AjMurray21) <a href="https://twitter.com/AjMurray21/status/1759549370855248023?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2024</a>
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<p id="SWDtyW">According to showrunner/writer/director Issa López, the decision to limit <em>Night Country</em> to six episodes was <a href="https://twitter.com/IssitaLopez/status/1755676348910276644">entirely hers</a>. As she <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24033358/true-detective-night-country-issa-lopez-interview-spoiler-free">explained</a> to <em>Polygon</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p id="eJWfc6">In my initial conversation with HBO about it, they were like, “How do you feel about <em>True Detective</em>?” and I told them what I had in mind. And they said, “We love it. 10 episodes?” And I was like, “No,” because I wanted to direct every one of them, you know? And as time went by there were several conversations where they were like, “Seven?” and I was like “No, six.” It was always six. It <em>is</em> tight for all the terrain we cover in the series, but at the same time, I am a firm believer in economy and saying what’s necessary and never overstaying your welcome, leaving people wanting more. So it was a perfect size, I think.</p></blockquote>
<aside id="3qwDbQ"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Exit Survey ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2024/2/18/24076958/true-detective-night-country-season-4-episode-6-series-finale-exit-survey"},{"title":"Who Done It? Breaking Down the Finale of ‘True Detective: Night Country’ ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2024/2/18/24076909/true-detective-night-country-season-4-episode-6-finale-recap"}]}'></div></aside><p id="lpW2ZR">A good deal of the audience seems to disagree, judging by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueDetective/comments/1anpbwf/cant_believe_this_season_only_has_six_episodes/">the</a> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueDetective/comments/1akfzo7/why_are_there_only_6_episodes/">widespread</a> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueDetective/comments/1aq538v/6_episodes_isnt_enough/">consternation</a> about the season’s length and the common <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2024/2/13/24071752/true-detective-night-country-pace-murder-investigation">critiques</a> of the show’s pacing. <em>Night Country</em> felt, at times, like a movie stretched to six episodes, or an eight- or 10-episode season compressed into six. Some of the subplots—Hank Prior’s fake fiancée, Pete Prior’s family life, Julia Navarro’s mental illness—begged to be either curtailed or developed further, leading to dueling impressions that the show was somehow both padded <em>and</em> rushed. And as for those unsolved mysteries: Most of the central tensions of the season were resolved, and some were intentionally left ambiguous, but some reveals seemed abrupt, and some loose ends lingered. “Some questions just don’t have answers,” Danvers says in the finale, but maybe more questions could have been addressed satisfactorily—and more characters could’ve been given greater depth—with an extra episode or two.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I need justice for true detective having only 6 episodes this season… that’s just not right</p>— Gelo (@YaBoyGelo) <a href="https://twitter.com/YaBoyGelo/status/1759653104914477221?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2024</a>
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<p id="xGWvAq">In a 2015 <em>Vulture </em>story titled “How Long Should a TV Season Be?,” TV critic Margaret Lyons <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2015/08/tv-seasons-how-long-should-they-be.html">wrote</a>, “Six episodes is the wrong length. It’s too short. That is not enough TV to constitute a ‘season.’ … Six episodes is an acceptable length only for a miniseries, and even then, maybe we’d be better off with either more or less story.” In the nearly nine years since, TV makers have roundly rejected that stance.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">True detective Night Country finale is out. The series should have been longer than 6 episodes.</p>— Dan Sarge (@DanSarbz) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanSarbz/status/1759434649900601604?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2024</a>
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<p id="pjk4t3">There was a time, not terribly long ago, when the six-episode season was a distinctly British institution, as foreign to Americans as the metric system, driving on the left side of the road, and calling TV “telly.” As someone who grew up watching (and wondering why there wasn’t more of) the classic BBC sitcom <em>Fawlty Towers</em>, I<em> </em>cherished a <em>Simpsons</em> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w09YzTMY1qk">line</a> (from the 15th episode of the series’ 22-episode 11th season) about a fictional British sitcom called <em>Do Shut Up</em>:<em> </em>“Not hard to see why it’s England’s longest-running series—and today, we’re showing all seven episodes.” Sixteen years later, when <em>The Good Place</em> made essentially the <a href="https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/23e5539b-f6df-4aa9-ac6d-0aedfdb76bb2">same</a> <a href="https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/7f70fab2-2ecd-49c5-9793-59d151640ce8">joke</a>—“It ran for 16 years on the BBC. They did nearly 30 episodes.”—the average length of a U.S. TV season was <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2015/06/10-episodes-is-the-new-13-was-the-new-22.html">already declining</a>, but the six-episode season was still a real rarity.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">wait true detective is already over? 6 episodes?? since when do we live in the UK?????????????</p>— erb (@bentleyliz2) <a href="https://twitter.com/bentleyliz2/status/1759585216799158482?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2024</a>
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<p id="PBzgTy">It’s not news to anyone that TV seasons have shrunk, but the degree and rate of the change are still shocking. The chart below shows the average number of episodes of the top 100 U.S. scripted series (by average IMDb user score) in each year dating back to 1981, excluding extremely prolific soap operas.</p>
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<p id="m6aCLb">In the ’80s and ’90s, the average length of highly rated TV seasons typically approached or exceeded 20 episodes. Although the decrease set in around Y2K, a 20-episode average appeared as late as 2010. The drop-off post-2010 has been precipitous: In the past two years, the averages have barely been above eight, roughly half of what they were a decade ago. We can trace this progression through the lens of <em>Star Trek</em>:<em> </em>Although there are more <em>Star Trek </em>series than there have ever been before, most of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/8/6/21357421/star-trek-lower-decks-picard-television-expansion">today’s</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2022/7/7/23197786/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-1-finale-review"><em>Trek</em></a><em> </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/4/21/23692833/picard-season-3-star-trek-nostalgia-fan-reviews-turnaround">shows</a> feature 10-episode seasons, compared to the previously standard 22 to 26.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">wait, there's only one episode of True Detective Night Country left? the season is only six episodes? what the fuck?</p>— JASON EDGE (@Doubt_Evrything) <a href="https://twitter.com/Doubt_Evrything/status/1757568051883421999?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2024</a>
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<p id="iK5Oka">In light of that plummeting average, it’s no surprise that over the past 10 years, six- and eight-episode seasons have made up a growing percentage of all scripted series, while higher-episode-increment seasons have accounted for smaller and smaller portions.</p>
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<p id="JvggaT">Unlike the fate of <em>Night Country</em>’s Oliver Tagaq, the causes of this redistribution of season lengths <a href="https://screenrant.com/why-tv-show-seasons-shorter-reason/">aren’t a mystery</a>. The pursuit of prestige has led to an emphasis on quality over quantity—which manifests in less filler and higher (read: more expensive) production values—and a preference for and deference to auteurs like López, who may want to write and/or direct every episode <a href="https://www.theringer.com/star-wars/2023/10/13/23915112/star-wars-mandoverse-ahsoka-the-mandalorian-dave-filoni-jon-favreau">personally</a>. (Two of <a href="https://screenrant.com/why-british-tv-show-seasons-shorter-than-american/">the</a> <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BritishBrevity">reasons</a>—along with a lack of syndication incentives, less clement weather, and a smaller population and, thus, a smaller scale—for British TV’s habitual brevity.) Shorter seasons also reduce the risks networks incur on any individual series and allow actors to work on more projects. Of course, the incredible shrinking season has been driven or exacerbated by the ascendance of streaming networks, which may prefer binge-friendly lengths and don’t care about syndicating series or filling broadcast time slots. (Netflix’s first original series, <em>Lilyhammer</em>, premiered in 2012 with a binge-dropped eight-episode season.)</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Am looking forward to Night Country finale (will watch tomorrow night) but only 6 episodes is kind of a let down...string it out. Lets get weird</p>— Chris Allen Official (@jchrisallen) <a href="https://twitter.com/jchrisallen/status/1759415033404993591?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2024</a>
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<p id="bYOxvV">As I <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2017/8/4/16094348/inefficiency-week-mourning-the-lost-long-tv-season">wrote</a> in 2017, one downside of this lower-volume, pick-your-spots-style approach is that we’ve lost potential time with the sort of special shows that maintained a consistent quality level over longer seasons. On <em>Star Trek: The Next Generation</em>, <em>The Good Wife</em>, and <em>Frasier</em>, respectively, Jean-Luc Picard, Diane Lockhart, and Frasier Crane used to keep us company for half the year. On <em>Picard</em>, <em>The Good Fight</em>, and <em>Frasier</em> (the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/12/7/23991688/frasier-reboot-finale-reindeer-games-review-paramount-plus-kelsey-grammer">new one</a>), they were much less frequent guests on our screens. And it’s not just that the more recent seasons run for 10 episodes instead of 22-plus; it’s also that the breaks between are longer. As Alan Sepinwall <a href="https://alansepinwall.substack.com/p/make-it-2015-again-through-science">wrote</a> last week, “So much time passes in between seasons that it’s hard to both remember and feel emotionally connected to everything after a long hiatus.”</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">True Detective Night Country only having 6 episodes feels illegal</p>— Ryan Kober (@GrizzlyKobear) <a href="https://twitter.com/GrizzlyKobear/status/1757589171391148515?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2024</a>
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<p id="pfM2Qn">In the case of a compelling 10-episode season that theoretically could’ve been a strong 20-episode season in an earlier era, the result is less of a good thing. When 10 episodes dwindle to six, though, the cost could be even steeper: not just less of a good thing, but <em>a less good thing</em>. At a certain point, that is, whittling away episodes doesn’t leave a leaner, harder-hitting season behind; it weakens the load-bearing structures that support the season’s arc. And that point, some evidence suggests, is six episodes.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Very excited for the final episode of 'Night Country' but also bummed bc it was so fucking good I need more than 6 episodes.</p>— Tori (@hitandrun7) <a href="https://twitter.com/hitandrun7/status/1759405929165164838?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 19, 2024</a>
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<p id="UABhky">Why should we side-eye the six-episode season? Check out the chart below, which shows the average IMDb user rating for scripted seasons since 2014, broken down by number of episodes.</p>
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<p id="DQ61IE">Ten episodes—for what it’s worth, the order López said HBO had in mind for <em>Night Country</em>—seem like the sweet spot, but most other lengths fall in roughly the same range. <em>Except</em> for the six-episode season, which is clearly a cut below.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Honestly, been disappointed in the last two episodes of True Detective: Night Country<br><br>It is being very seriously hampered by only being 6 episodes long. Terrible decision there</p>— Fresh Food For All (@evduzit) <a href="https://twitter.com/evduzit/status/1754918399581323402?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2024</a>
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<p id="elJEKn">Six-episode seasons also rate poorly in a second, related respect: They’re prone to weaker finales. On the whole, finales tend to post <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/7/31/17628494/when-do-tv-shows-peak">above-average</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/game-of-thrones/2019/5/23/18636692/season-8-iron-throne-imdb-ratings-worst-tv-finale-ever">scores</a>. And in general, the longer the season, the higher the score for the finale. The finales of six-episode seasons are barely better than the average episode.</p>
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<p id="zezojz">One might suspect that longer seasons contain more exposition, setup, and detours that drag down their averages, thereby making it easier for the finales to stand out. Given that the six-episode seasons receive the lowest average scores, though, they clearly aren’t all killer, no filler. Maybe their finales flop, relatively speaking, because six episodes aren’t enough to generate sufficient suspense or because there’s not enough screen time to tie up and pay off plot threads.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">If there's really only going to be 6 episodes of True Detective Night Country then my week is ruined</p>— Too (@TooOftenOdd) <a href="https://twitter.com/TooOftenOdd/status/1754523608531996920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2024</a>
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<p id="qWgKcR">If we want to slice and dice the data more thinly—granted, we’re getting into “<a href="https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1754347328247398829">analyzing the crosstabs</a> in political polls” territory here—we see some signs that certain genres are especially dicey six-episode propositions. Six-episode seasons classified as mysteries, crime shows, and dramas all have flimsier finales (relative to their baseline season scores) than even the average six-episode season, possibly because the more complex and serious the stakes, the harder they are to build up and bring to fruition in six episodes (<em>True Detective</em> is classified as a drama, a mystery, <em>and</em> a crime show, so historically speaking, the deck was stacked against <em>Night Country</em>, especially considering the added narrative burden of its ties to Season 1).</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">what do you mean td night country will only have 6 episodes</p>— vic (@corps_exquis) <a href="https://twitter.com/corps_exquis/status/1757693905213010027?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2024</a>
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<p id="ElXwrv">Admittedly, we’re dealing with, at most, modest differences; it’s not as if six-episode seasons are doomed to be bad or anticlimactic. Over the thousands of seasons that constitute this combined pool, though—10 years of “<a href="https://variety.com/2015/tv/news/tca-fx-networks-john-landgraf-wall-street-1201559191/">too much TV</a>”—those differences are meaningful. And six is the unluckiest length. Maybe it’s too<em> little</em> TV.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Night Country fire but I’m mad they only gave us 6 episodes</p>— dyson daniels floater (@killmesIime) <a href="https://twitter.com/killmesIime/status/1759044701133402243?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 18, 2024</a>
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<p id="DONlZ1">Now, a couple of caveats. We’re really looking at correlation, not causation: We can’t say with certainty that six-episode seasons (and their finales) have scored worse <em>because</em> they were only six episodes. It could be that shows with weaker bones or skimpier source materials are more likely to get shunted toward six-episode seasons, while higher-ceiling series are steered toward eight or 10; in other words, maybe a 10-episode order is a vote of confidence in a series’ inherent appeal. It’s also possible that six-episode seasons are more likely to come early or late in a series’ life span, when it’s still finding its footing or running out of runway, à la the first seasons of <em>Parks and Recreation</em> and <em>Fear the Walking Dead</em> or the last seasons of <em>The Expanse </em>and <em>Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan</em>. Not many series significantly change their episode counts from season to season, so we don’t have a huge dataset of season-switchers to study, and we can’t exactly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing">A/B test</a> TV season length to see which length produces the ideal outcome, all else being equal. We’ll never know whether the seven- or 10-episode versions of <em>Night Country </em>would’ve been better than the one we got. (It’s quite possible that they would’ve been worse!)</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">im enjoying true detective: night country more than others seem to be. i really like the locale and the cast. but i had no idea its only 6 episodes this time. feels like its on episode 2.</p>— alexander max payne (@mappewpwellps) <a href="https://twitter.com/mappewpwellps/status/1754624660317380627?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2024</a>
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<p id="liPazB">It’s nice that actors today get to play more parts and that not every series needs to be built to last. TV seasons aren’t one-size-fits-all: Different series are suited to different lengths, and it would be silly to stretch six episodes’ worth of story onto an eight- or 10-episode frame. Historically speaking, though, six-episode seasons have tended to be lower-rated than longer seasons, with more deflating finales. With that track record in mind, you’d be justified in looking slightly askance at the prospect of a six-episode season, relative to more extended alternatives.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">"True Detective: Night Country" has all the suspense, mystery and complex characters we could hope for. Can't believe it will only be 6 episodes.</p>— KJ (@PrissyKFJ) <a href="https://twitter.com/PrissyKFJ/status/1746790888108667087?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 15, 2024</a>
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<p id="DKtTUn">Again, though, season length hardly determines quality. Marvel’s small-screen MCU efforts started strong on Disney+ with the nine-episode <em>WandaVision</em>, but subsequent six-episode efforts—most notably <em>Secret Invasion</em> but also, to some extent, <em>The Falcon and the Winter Soldier</em>, <em>Ms. Marvel</em>, <em>Moon Knight</em>, and <em>Hawkeye</em>—have had forgettable runs or <a href="https://screenrant.com/mcu-tv-show-bad-endings-wandavision-writer/">lackluster finales</a>. However, Marvel’s two six-episode seasons of <em>Loki</em> are two of the highest-scoring on record. <em>The Walking Dead</em>’s six-episode spinoffs have seen similarly variable results:<em> Tales of the Walking Dead</em> was a snoozer that hasn’t earned a second season, while <em>Dead City </em>was so-so and <em>Daryl Dixon</em> was a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/10/16/23918284/walking-dead-daryl-dixon-season-finale-spinoffs-amc">qualified</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2023/10/20/23926016/did-daryl-dixon-reanimate-the-walking-dead">win</a>. HBO disappointed with <em>The Undoing</em>, <em>The Third Day</em>, and arguably <em>Night Country</em>—though <em>Night Country </em>got good reviews initially and drew a <a href="https://deadline.com/2024/02/true-detective-night-country-most-watched-installment-ratings-1235824827/">robust audience</a>—but achieved its typical quality with <em>Show Me a Hero</em>, <em>We Own This City</em>, <em>The Time Traveler’s Wife</em>, and <em>The White Lotus </em>Season 1 (Season 2 expanded to seven episodes).</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">True Detective: Night Country has been an A+ so far going into the finale. I’m just sad it’s only 6 episodes.</p>— Vishal Patel (@vrpatel) <a href="https://twitter.com/vrpatel/status/1756188289206268205?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2024</a>
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<p id="0ptEpd">In lieu of listing many more examples of the positive (<em>Black Bird</em>,<em> Dark Winds</em>,<em> Schmigadoon!</em>, <em>Corporate </em>Season 3) and negative (<em>Citadel</em>, <em>Sex/Life</em> Season 2,<em> Soulmates</em>, <em>Moonhaven</em>) sides of the six-episode ledger, I’ll leave you with one intriguing—and encouraging—takeaway. Some of the highest-scoring six-episode series in our sample—<em>The Night Manager</em>, <em>Slow Horses</em>, <em>Good Omens</em>, <em>The English</em>, <em>Belgravia</em>—were made by Brits or were British-American coproductions. Maybe American creators are still getting the hang of a form that U.K. creators have learned to deal with over decades.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I’m thrown off that the new season of True Detective, Night Country, is only 6 episodes. Like why is is 2 episodes shorter than all the other seasons? Is it because this season and the first season are connected through a character bridge and this is a continuation of S1?</p>— Conspiracy Nix (@ConspiracyNix) <a href="https://twitter.com/ConspiracyNix/status/1757210832994206028?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2024</a>
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<p id="3btjOc">One would hope the Yanks will catch on: We may be in for more six-episode seasons, seeing as the industry is in the thick of what former network executive and current Substack author the “Entertainment Strategy Guy”<a href="https://entertainment.substack.com/p/80-biggest-tv-show-flops-bombs-misses-2023"> identifies</a> as “a general pullback in TV production, as the streamers focus on profitability” and “a decline in big budget and expensive shows in general.” Thanks in part to streamers’ belt-tightening and in part to the strikes, 2023 was the first time since at least 2012—save for the 2020 pandemic year—that the number of scripted original series<a href="https://deadline.com/2024/02/peak-tv-over-original-series-drop-2023-1235693814/"> dropped</a>. However, the pendulum may be swinging back toward more expansive seasons. Long-running procedurals and sitcoms acquired by Netflix and the like are such<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/4474380-the-top-streamed-shows-are-almost-all-old-why/"> streaming juggernauts</a>—shout-outs to<a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/8/25/23845137/suits-netflix-binge-watching-definitive-show-summer-2023"> <em>Suits</em></a> and<a href="https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/young-sheldon-streaming-netflix-ratings-max/"> <em>Young Sheldon</em></a>—that<a href="https://theankler.com/p/whats-selling-whos-buying-in-tv-the"> there’s</a><a href="https://theankler.com/p/tv-market-forecast-2024-unsteady"> interest</a> in making more like them. The future of TV might look like its past: fewer shows, but larger libraries. Good or bad, six-episode seasons only last so long.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">True Detective Night Country Finale better be a banger, So far they've bitten off more than they can chew. They've tried to condense a 3 case police story + ancillaries & family strife into 6 episodes. It's messy and disjointed without any flow. <a href="https://t.co/xWrZ4c3zjC">pic.twitter.com/xWrZ4c3zjC</a></p>— leonTheCanteen (@leonTheCanteen) <a href="https://twitter.com/leonTheCanteen/status/1758609868833837120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 16, 2024</a>
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<p id="FFEPaY">Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta go check out the next big Sunday night drama: <em>The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live</em>. How many episodes is it, again? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead:_The_Ones_Who_Live#:~:text=Lincoln%20and%20Gurira%20signed%20on,Who%20Live%20in%20July%202023.">Oh</a>.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="uXE4t5">You know what? On second thought, let’s give <em>Shogun</em> a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dgun_(2024_TV_series)">shot</a>.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tv/2024/2/20/24077826/true-detective-night-country-six-episode-season-length-imdbBen LindberghRob Arthur2024-02-19T08:19:20-05:002024-02-19T08:19:20-05:00The ‘Final Fantasy’ Party Draft
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<img alt="SKOREA-JAPAN-GAMES-FINAL FANTASY" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6SOwpbOT1rb4yYP7W7oDpphEp5M=/419x0:7122x5027/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73149457/1258923690.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Ben, Matt James, Justin Charity, and Rob Mahoney party up for a pre-‘Rebirth’ draft of ‘Final Fantasy’ favorites</p> <div id="zQDcOo"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 152px; position: relative;"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/4efjkWCgOLTSOK0ymFnjAu?utm_source=oembed" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" allow="clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="EpokDi"><br><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/4efjkWCgOLTSOK0ymFnjAu">Ben, Matt James, Justin Charity, and Rob Mahoney</a> party up for a pre-<em>Rebirth</em> draft of <em>Final Fantasy</em> favorites. First they discuss an amazing month for remakes and remasters (4:00), followed by three pressing questions prompted by <em>Final Fantasy VII Rebirth</em> (9:40). Then they recap their histories with the <em>Final Fantasy</em> franchise (31:12), explain the draft rules (39:17), and assemble their all-time-great rosters of <em>Final Fantasy</em> characters (42:40).</p>
<p id="6l9rn7">Host: Ben Lindbergh<br>Guests: Matt James, Justin Charity, and Rob Mahoney<br>Producer: Devon Renaldo<br>Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal</p>
<p id="wtNgrX"><strong>Subscribe:</strong> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3z9QIZzDR4o34uBBbsxb0z">Spotify</a> / <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ringer-verse/id1558211702">Apple Podcasts</a> </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/2024/2/19/24077207/final-fantasy-party-draftBen Lindbergh2024-02-16T11:47:29-05:002024-02-16T11:47:29-05:00The Ex-Player GM Is Making a Major League Comeback
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<p>Twenty years after ‘Moneyball,’ baseball’s GM cycle is trending back toward former big leaguers. What’s behind the increasing number of ex-player execs? And what does this shift mean for MLB?</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="W1bMVC">In early June 2018, Seattle Mariners backup catcher Chris Herrmann was almost ready for the <a href="https://twitter.com/RyanDivish/status/1005181081631510530">rehab</a> <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/mariners-activated-right-handed-pitcher-juan-nicasio-and-catcher-chris-herrmann-from-the-disabled-list/">assignment</a> that would complete his recovery from a <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/chris-herrmann-heads-to-dl-with-oblique-strain-c279058570">strained oblique</a>. Before he could get into games, though, Herrmann had to perform “baseball activities,” one of which was to take batting practice. There was one problem: He had no batting practice pitcher.</p>
<p id="nCBYmN">Herrmann was in Seattle, while the Mariners and their two local minor league affiliates were on road trips. The personal trainer who normally would have thrown BP for a rehabbing player had flown home to tend to a family emergency, and the assistant strength and conditioning coach who remained had no baseball background. If a pitcher couldn’t be found, Herrmann would have had to fly to and from a more distant affiliate or wait for the major league team to return to town. Either option would have delayed his comeback. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail">For want of</a> a BP pitcher, a backup catcher would have been lost. And for want of a backup catcher … well, this was the Mariners, so the season was likely to be lost one way or another. But despite being mired in a decades-long playoff drought, the team <em>was</em> in first place at the time, and having Herrmann would help.</p>
<p id="RUNxBG">Fortunately, a solution presented itself—or, rather, himself. “I said, ‘I’ll come down; I’ll throw him BP,’” Jerry Dipoto recalls.</p>
<p id="5cUIJ8">Dipoto, then the team’s general manager and now its president of baseball operations, is a former major league reliever, so tossing fat pitches for Herrmann to tee off on for 20 to 25 minutes was well within the then-50-year-old righty’s skill set. After the session was over, Dipoto remembers, “I gave him a little fist bump, and he said, ‘That was pretty good. … Did you play in college?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I did.’ And he said, ‘That was pretty impressive.’” Herrmann then approached the strength coach and said, “When have you ever seen a GM who can throw BP like that?” The coach said, “You know he pitched in the big leagues, right?” To which Herrmann responded, “My God, I feel like an idiot.”</p>
<p id="6C8QKJ">“Of all people, man—the <em>GM</em>,” Herrmann says five-plus years later, with a wince and a laugh. “I’m like, <em>aww,</em> <em>gosh</em>, <em>maybe I should’ve done my homework on this guy.</em>”</p>
<p id="jBG7Az">Herrmann needn’t have been so hard on himself. (Who <em>hasn’t</em> embarrassed themselves in front of their boss?) He’d joined the Mariners less than two months earlier. Plus, Dipoto wasn’t a star player, and he hadn’t pitched in the majors since 2000, when Herrmann was 12 years old. Beyond that, though, Herrmann was right: There really <em>weren’t</em> many GMs who could throw BP like that. In 2018, only two former major leaguers were running baseball operations departments, and Dipoto was the lone former pitcher. The backup catcher may not have been familiar with Dipoto’s past, but his surprise reflected the reality of the era: Ex-player GMs had never been more scarce.</p>
<p id="nxo1yN">Ever since the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_manager_(baseball)">development</a> of dedicated general managers a century or so ago—in contrast to the field managers and team owners and/or presidents who typically put teams together before then—there has always been a mix of top executives from nonplaying <em>and</em> playing backgrounds: the figurative descendants of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Barrow">Ed Barrow</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_Rickey">Branch Rickey</a>. Though the numbers in each category waxed or waned from year to year, near balance was mostly maintained. In the second half of the 20th century, roughly 43 percent of GMs in the average season had previously played professional baseball, and approximately 27 percent had made the majors.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="xDgVES"><q>“What I’m impressed with hearing them is that when you talk to them, you don’t necessarily say, ‘Oh, wow. These guys are ex-players.’ You say, ‘Wow, these guys are really bright guys.’” —Billy Beane, A’s senior adviser</q></aside></div>
<p id="bPmFoF"><em>This </em>century brought a new <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major-General%27s_Song">model of a modern majors general manager</a>: one who <em>couldn’t</em> serve as a substitute BP pitcher, even in a pinch. Post-<em>Moneyball</em>, MLB C-suites have been more hospitable to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB115031062874880292">people</a> <a href="https://thepenngazette.com/when-fantasy-baseball-gets-real/">who</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/sports/baseball/michael-fishman-solving-the-yankee-equation.html">dominated</a> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/la-sp-dodgers-zaidi-fantasy-football-20180223-story.html">fantasy</a> <a href="https://theathletic.com/264090/2018/03/07/kaplan-how-a-really-big-fantasy-baseball-nerd-became-jeff-luhnows-right-hand-man/">sports</a> than to former professional athletes. As <em>Ringer </em>contributor Noah Gittell puts it in his forthcoming <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Baseball-Movie-Noah-Gittell/dp/1637272642">book</a> about baseball movies, “Sabermetrics shifted the power from those who played the game (players and managers) to people with economics degrees who had never set foot on a major league ballfield. These new baseball gods were young and smart and probably not very good at playing baseball.” </p>
<p id="zeu695">Those new gods aren’t going anywhere, but after bowing before them for almost 20 years, the league seems to be embracing a blend of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Gods_and_the_New">the old gods and the new</a> while filling front-office leadership roles. White Sox assistant GM Josh Barfield says an apparent resurgence in teams’ interest is “definitely something that I’ve noticed and that we as former players talk about, because you used to see that a lot more when a lot of us were coming up, and then the pendulum swung.” Now, he asserts, “We’re seeing it come back the other way.”</p>
<p id="iXxWcz">That <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/3/18/22337384/perfect-pitching-machine-trajekt-winmill-jeff-kensrud">doesn’t mean</a> many GMs will be called upon in batting practice. But you know who <em>could</em> throw great BP—and who, at 6-foot-10, wouldn’t surprise many hitters when he revealed his baseball background? Texas Rangers GM Chris Young, who last year became the first former big leaguer to run the baseball operations of a World Series winner since Kenny Williams of the White Sox in 2005. Another new emergency BP candidate: Craig Breslow, the first-year chief baseball officer of the Boston Red Sox, who, like Young, last stepped off a major league mound in 2017. In 2024, those two, along with new White Sox GM Chris Getz and Dipoto, constitute double 2018’s total of MLB alumni at the top of baseball ops org charts. Several other ex-MLBers—some of them hotter prospects as execs than they ever were as players—are one or two title bumps away from joining them, including Dodgers GM Brandon Gomes and Phillies GM Sam Fuld (the seconds-in-command to POBOs Andrew Friedman and Dave Dombrowski, respectively), and four assistant GMs: Barfield, Randy Flores (Cardinals), Jorge Velandia (Phillies), and Gabe Kapler (Marlins).</p>
<p id="WN7cnX">In 2011, Jayson Stark <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110317045811/http:/insider.espn.go.com/mlb/blog?name=stark_jayson&id=6210431&action=login&appRedirect=http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/blog%3Fname%3Dstark_jayson%26id%3D6210431">wrote</a> for ESPN, “These days, you almost never see a team trot a former player up to the podium to try on his general-manager hat.” Nothing changed for the rest of that decade: Throughout the 2010s, teams tapped only two new former players, Dipoto and Tony La Russa, to be baseball ops top dogs. (While overseeing the Diamondbacks’ baseball operations as the team’s chief baseball officer in 2014, La Russa also appointed erstwhile A’s ace Dave “Smoke” Stewart—Herrmann’s former agent—as GM, though Herrmann never faced Stewart’s batting practice smoke when the catcher played for Arizona in 2016.) But between Breslow and Getz, the league has added that not-so-grand total just in the past several months. And for the first time in ages, there may be more in-demand ex-player GM candidates than there are GM job openings: Before Breslow got his gig, Gomes, Fuld, and Kapler either interviewed for the Boston job or declined invitations.</p>
<p id="SB4K3C">“What I’m impressed with hearing them is that when you talk to them, you don’t necessarily say, ‘Oh, wow. These guys are ex-players,’” says A’s senior adviser Billy Beane. “You say, ‘Wow, these guys are really bright guys.’”</p>
<p id="tH2nWa">It’s about time teams rediscovered that it’s possible to be both.</p>
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<img alt="Jerry Dipoto..." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CR5m7Eko6mhtyO4n56Wt2EykVWc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25289175/72316778.jpg">
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="ubxAfV">Among current team decision-makers, Dombrowski is uniquely capable of taking the long view (even though he’s known for making win-now moves). The 67-year-old Phillies POBO broke into baseball with the White Sox the year before <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night">Disco Demolition Night</a>. En route to becoming the game’s youngest GM in 1988, he apprenticed under execs who hailed from opposite ends of the playing-experience spectrum, acting as AGM in Chicago for Roland Hemond (who never played professionally) and in Montreal for Bill Stoneman (who earned Cy Young votes for the franchise of which he went on to be the boss). That’s appropriate, because as baseball epochs have passed and he’s settled into his silver-fox phase, Dombrowski has watched the sport oscillate between two poles of preference for on-field credentials.</p>
<p id="GNDY35">Early in Dombrowski’s career, he says, Hemond told him hiring for GMs “goes in cycles.” In the process of steering a <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/phillies/phillies-world-series-dombrowski-hall-of-fame-astros-20221028.html">record</a> four different teams to the World Series, Dombrowski has observed Hemond’s wisdom be borne out. “I have seen a lot of cycles,” he says, adding, “When I was early in my career as a general manager, a lot of the people that were successful [as] general managers were people who played the game on the field. And then we got away from that a little bit. Now there’s more of those individuals coming back into the game.”</p>
<p id="0bjf5l">The chart below, based on data provided by Baseball Reference that goes back to 1950, conveys that ebb and flow. The blue line represents the percentage of top executives each year who had been big league players, and the red line represents the percentage who had played in the majors <em>or</em> the affiliated minors (but not, for instance, independent ball, à la A’s GM <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=forst-001dav">David Forst</a>). Only the most senior baseball operations executive on each team was included; when teams switched top execs within one year, both were counted, but interim GMs who weren’t subsequently converted to permanent status were omitted.</p>
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</figure>
<p id="3bRORx">This year’s rate of ex–major leaguer execs is the highest since 2015, a stat that comes with a caveat: Dipoto, who got his first official GM job in late 2011, was double-counted in 2015 because he spent the first half of the year as Angels GM before resigning and subsequently moving to the Mariners. (Stoneman, Dombrowski’s superior with the Expos, took over on an interim basis in Anaheim.) You have to go back to 2012 to find another year whose rate equals 2024’s, or to 2005 to find a year that surpasses this one’s. Compared to recent rates, this year’s uptick—which could theoretically rise further, if another ex-player is promoted midyear—is a real renaissance, especially considering the deep bench of slightly less senior ex–big league execs whose proximity to a top job isn’t captured by this chart. </p>
<p id="F0O38c">Of course, this is still a puny percentage by historical standards: From 2006 through 2023, ex–major leaguer GMs were roughly a third as common as they were from 1950 through 1999, and GMs who had played in the majors <em>or</em> minors were roughly as well-represented as former major leaguers alone used to be. Dipoto, who at 55 is the oldest of the active ex-player execs, made the majors in 1993, when GMs with pro playing experience were the norm and GMs with MLB experience were more than twice as common as they are this year. He describes the difference between then and now the same way Hemond and Dombrowski did: “When I first entered professional baseball, there were quite a few former players that were active general managers. … Then it just went away, and now it’s cycling back.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="epcxUd"><q>“I can count the number of front-office analysts that I encountered in the late ’80s and the early ’90s on a finger. There just weren’t very many that you were ever exposed to. Now, that’s an everyday occurrence for everybody in your baseball group, including your players on the field.” —Jerry Dipoto</q></aside></div>
<p id="sMXBFW">There may be more than one reason why the ex-player GM fell out of favor. Ironically, though, the biggest blow to the standing of the ex-player GM may have been dealt indirectly by a team that’s closely associated with one of the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/4/13/22372364/billy-beane-brian-cashman-yankees-oakland-as-legacy">longest-tenured</a> ex-player GMs: the <em>Moneyball</em> A’s.</p>
<p id="TJs2L8">Sandy Alderson, Beane’s mentor and predecessor as A’s GM, was a former Marine but not a former major leaguer. He had innovative, unorthodox ideas, but he lacked the political capital and chutzpah to impose them. “I had credibility problems,” Alderson <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Moneyball/RWOX_2eYPcAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA57&printsec=frontcover&dq=credibility">told</a> Michael Lewis in <em>Moneyball</em>. “I didn’t have a baseball background.”</p>
<p id="dEJgpO">Beane boasted what Alderson lacked. “Billy had not only played, he might as well wear a sign around his neck that said: <em>I’ve been here, so don’t go trying any of that big league bullshit on me</em>,” Lewis wrote. Beane’s comfort in the clubhouse emboldened him to go anywhere and say anything to anyone; he couldn’t be bullshitted or barred from some inner sanctum where the manager made his decisions free from front-office interference. In Oakland, the manager was more of an instrument of Beane’s will than an independent operator: As Lewis <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Moneyball/RWOX_2eYPcAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA154&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22uniform%22">reported</a>, a player who’d recently joined the A’s roster soon realized that “Billy Beane ran the whole show.” Beane had pulled off the power grab that Alderson dreamed of but wouldn’t or couldn’t accomplish: “In what other business,” Alderson had <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Moneyball/RWOX_2eYPcAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA60&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22middle%20manager%22">groused</a>, “do you leave the fate of the organization to a middle manager?”</p>
<p id="8BRlRg">Perhaps more important than Beane’s bloodless clubhouse coup were the team’s results: The A’s won games and made playoff appearances without spending much money, an outcome owners envied. Hiring cycles, Dombrowski says, are usually “reflective of copying, in many ways, who’s winning and successful at that time.” Moneyball as a concept was successful on the field, in bookstores, and ultimately at multiplexes. Other owners wanted Beane clones of their own. But the people who were best prepared to apply and expand the practices the A’s had pioneered or popularized mostly weren’t Beane’s player peers. They were the real-life inspirations for the <em>Moneyball</em> movie’s stathead sidekick, Peter Brand.</p>
<p id="7RkfTL">Beane himself acknowledges how heavily he leaned on lieutenants who weren’t major leaguers: “The biggest assist to my career was having guys named David Forst, Farhan Zaidi, and Paul DePodesta next to my side. ... If I had to change my playing experience, or having those guys, I’d just as soon never have played.” Playing baseball at a high level in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s hardly prepared major leaguers for future front-office roles in a world where received wisdom and the eye test no longer ruled the roost in team building.</p>
<p id="126fM6">Kapler, whose MLB career ran from 1998 to 2010, says he and his contemporaries were largely out of the loop on the analytical advances that affected their careers: “When I played, I don’t think anybody had any clue how we were being valued, because we were right in that transition period where there were new numbers being looked at.” Flores, a left-handed pitcher who made the majors in 2002 and retired after 2011, sums up the sabermetric sea change: “For a hundred years, baseball organizations thought that some experience in the game, playing in the major leagues, was important in a way for helping decide how to run a major league team. But then with the data revolution and analytics revolution, things were changing so, so fast, at hyper-speed, that the skill sets required and mandated to enact and execute that change were not present in a generation of ballplayers.”</p>
<p id="pFxsBA">Flores likens the sudden change in the attributes teams valued in front-office talent—and the resulting realignment of the people they employed and promoted—to Netflix’s <a href="https://review.firstround.com/The-woman-behind-the-Netflix-Culture-doc">pivot</a> from DVD distribution to streaming and content creation. MLB’s revolution in player evaluation, and the corresponding new alphabet soup of stats, developed so rapidly that a difference of a few years could determine a player’s exposure to (and, often, acceptance of) the principles that reshaped rosters.</p>
<p id="uzdnRN">Dipoto, the youthful-looking elder statesman of this squad of active, ex-player execs, is the only one whose whole career predated <em>Moneyball</em> and analytics’ accelerated infiltration of front offices. “I can count the number of front-office analysts that I encountered in the late ’80s and the early ’90s on a finger,” Dipoto says. “There just weren’t very many that you were ever exposed to. Now, that’s an everyday occurrence for everybody in your baseball group, including your players on the field.” Dipoto was introduced to, and intrigued by, the writing of Bill James in the ’80s, but it wasn’t until the first few years after his playing career—especially during a scouting stint in Boston in which he overlapped with James, Theo Epstein, and a few fellow future GMs—that he started to develop his latent interest.</p>
<p id="Rtfp3z">At that point, Dipoto says, he had been in the game for roughly 15 years and was “playing catch-up with people who just entered the baseball world a year or two prior.” He and his contemporaries had to adapt to survive the sport’s seismic sabermetric makeover, but players who came along 10 to 15 years later—like Young, Breslow, Getz, Gomes, and Fuld—“already have that advantage, and now they’re taking those things that they learned through their careers and they’re going to apply them.” Those 40-somethings—plus a 39-year-old, Gomes—played recently enough that MLB’s Statcast cameras tracked them, but even they might trail the true digital natives of today’s game, who’ve been steeped in stats and tech from the start. “The next generation—because I’m sure there will be a next generation—will be even further along in understanding how all of those things make sense,” Dipoto projects.</p>
<p id="5BER0L"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="SzheKM">Players never lacked the desire to put their stamp on teams. What they lacked was the wherewithal, and the demand. “Everyone who plays believes they have all of the answers to solve all of the problems that they faced when they were playing,” Breslow says. That belief leads to “ubiquitous conversations in the bullpen or on the bench about, ‘If I ever had a chance to do this, here’s how different I would do it.’ So I think there’s this inherent management or player-development lens through which all players view the game. I feel like I’ve just been really, really lucky to be in a position where I could actually impact the game in that way.”</p>
<p id="kLCo3E">In October 2017, FanGraphs’ David Laurila <a href="https://blogs.fangraphs.com/players-view-are-todays-analytically-inclined-players-tomorrows-gms/">pondered</a>, “Are Today’s Analytically Inclined Players Tomorrow’s GMs?”: a question I <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-Z9xDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT334&ots=Ywu4Me-EG6&dq=%22among%20gms%20hired%20in%20the%202010s%2C%20only%20two%2C%20dave%20stewart%20and%20jerry%20dipoto%2C%20have%20been%20big%20leaguers%22&pg=PT334#v=onepage&q&f=false">returned to</a> in my 2019 book about player development, <em>The MVP Machine</em>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines">Betteridge’s law</a> loses this round: The first wave of hybrid, player-analyst executives is here. The next wave—composed of the currently active players Dipoto is alluding to—seems equally inevitable, considering ballplayers’ burgeoning appetites for information. Barfield notes, “There’s more and more guys as they’re getting out of the game that are really diving in and becoming experts”—it’s almost a surprise when a player retiree doesn’t immediately move <a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/sean-doolittle-nationals-pitching-strategist-role">into</a> <a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/story/2024-01-30/padres-minor-league-coaching-assignments">player</a> <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/02/marlins-hire-sara-goodrum-brandon-mann.html">development</a>—but there are also more and more guys who are diving in and becoming experts as they’re getting <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2019/5/31/18647230/draft-pitchgrader-app-improves-release-pitches-wayne-sean-boyle"><em>into</em></a><em> </em>the game.</p>
<p id="3NbXXl">The first phase of baseball’s sabermetric overhaul focused on finding players who were already productive but undervalued. The current stage, which Breslow labels an “exponential acceleration of development,” is oriented around player improvement, which depends in large part on players’ participation or initiative. “No longer are players expected to be finished products when they get to the big leagues,” Breslow says. “Information and a better understanding of how information can be applied has shortened the development time frame so that you can walk into a lab and walk out of it with a new slider or a new curveball. … So I think there’s a much greater willingness or openness to trying these things.”<strong> </strong>Fuld seconds that sentiment. “Maybe 10, 20 years ago there was more resistance from players to take chances and make nontraditional moves,” he says. “And I don’t think that those sort of barriers exist nearly to the extent that they used to.” (They’re <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/jalen-rose-has-a-problem-with-basketball-analytics">finally</a> <a href="https://www.roycewebb.com/p/nba-analytics-is-about-people-people">falling</a> in other sports, too.)</p>
<p id="I026Vy">Friedman notes, “A big difference is that now we are getting players into our minor league system that are more versed and aware of data and other ways to value players and various levers that they can pull to get better. … By the time they get to the major league level, they … have a really good feel for things that 15 years ago they weren’t familiar with at all.” Or as Beane puts it, “This generation of players, it’s been a part of their training and upbringing, which I think is very, very helpful in preparing them.” Not just preparing them to play better, but potentially preparing them to be better front-office execs, because, Kapler says, “Some of them are seeking out ways to understand how teams value them, and that probably gives them a leg up.”</p>
<p id="1t9tdI"><a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/statheads-are-the-best-free-agent-bargains-in-baseball/">Nerds who never played</a> were once a market inefficiency, in <em>Moneyball </em>parlance. Now, the guys who wore jerseys represent a team’s best chance to buy low. It’s <em>Revenge of the Jocks</em>. Except the jocks are nerds now, too.</p>
<p id="vTStEl"></p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Division Series - Houston Astros v Kansas City Royals - Game One" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8U1wy6NBIPRYrNRHLAuFHQzbETY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25289176/491901038.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Chris Young</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="oSBFsT">Let’s stipulate that some former big leaguers, and many of the active ones, have addressed a deficiency that has prevented ex-players from ascending in the front-office ranks for most of this century. Even so, correcting a shortcoming isn’t the same as having an edge. What’s the former major leaguers’ <em>advantage</em>?</p>
<p id="ePlcCn">Breslow, the latest beneficiary of ex-player execs who have come back into vogue, says that when Fuld and Young got GM jobs, it seemed like “a deliberate correction in the market, in that I think the general narrative had been maybe the sport had become too inclined toward rote analytics and that some of the human elements and culture and experience had been pushed aside. I’m not sure that I agree with that narrative, but I do think that that was the prevailing one. The most straightforward and obvious way to dispute that is to try to find the hybrid profile that could take an analytical and an objective approach to the job while also embodying the experience and empathy that goes along with the playing career.”</p>
<p id="EFlpvY">Barfield elaborates on this distinction. “For so long,” he says, “it wasn’t players that really had a firm understanding of [analytics], but<strong> </strong>that stuff can be learned. What can’t be learned is the experiences that you have as a player and what you go through being on the mound, being in the box, the ups and downs, and the things that go on off the field. And I think being able to have an understanding of both sides, it gives you the best of both worlds.” Or, as Kapler puts it, “If you’re hiring a president of baseball ops or a general manager or a similar position, you want the cake and you want the frosting. And I think the executive being a former player is the frosting.”</p>
<p id="VkfWJU">It’s a compelling pitch. For the past 20 years, owners often faced a choice between a GM candidate who had Played the Game and one who was on the cutting edge. Now, the combo platter is becoming more common. The Rangers can’t complain about their first full season with Young at the helm; will other clubs be happy with these hires? Do fans have cause to celebrate when their team snags a new GM who has his own baseball cards? After all, <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/19571006/did-moneyball-teach-us-mlb-selling-jeans">we’re not selling</a> <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/11/29/blending-in-the-crowd-why-all-mlb-execs-dress-the-same">quarter-zips</a> here.</p>
<p id="l8o6bN">The job performances of former major leaguer GMs range from Rickey to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Harrelson#Executive_role_with_White_Sox">Hawk Harrelson</a>, so it’s difficult to make any accurate statements about their monolithic merits. If we compare the cumulative post-1950 records of non-players, ex–major leaguers, and ex–minor leaguers, they come in at .503, .496, and .488, respectively—separations of about one win over 162 games—though those are small enough differences to disregard, in light of the limitations of the dataset and the delay in team building between <a href="https://twitter.com/screaminbutcalm/status/1105577845642878976">sowing and reaping</a>. In lieu of raw records, we can consider qualitative traits. </p>
<p id="Q1vaZA">“Ideally, if you’re putting together a front office, you’re putting together a front office of people that complement one another, and you complement strengths with weaknesses,” Dombrowski says. One potentially complementary pairing is a non-player with a former player, a yin and yang that non-player Dombrowski pursued by <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30582983/sources-philadelphia-phillies-expected-promote-sam-fuld-gm">promoting</a> Fuld and Velandia to GM and AGM, respectively, less than two weeks after he was hired. But how, exactly, are ex-players especially well-suited to excel in senior front-office roles, and where might they face a steeper learning curve than non-players who had a head start in an office environment? </p>
<p id="n9JZeG">To a man, the 10 ex-player AGMs, GMs, and POBOs—as well as Dombrowski and Friedman—testify to the value of a former player’s lived experience. “When you listen to someone’s hardships, you want to be able to say, ‘I know how you feel,’” Breslow says. “When you are sharing your hardships, you want to share them with someone who knows how it feels. So I think the fact that as a former player I have been through winning a World Series and finishing in last place, getting traded, getting designated, getting optioned, getting called up, all of those things, I literally can speak from the position of knowing how those things feel.”</p>
<p id="P8byjy">None of which, Breslow allows, produces perfect decision-making. According to Fuld, it could even hurt: “It can be a challenge to divorce your own personal experiences [from] a more global, research-based understanding of what is most important. Just because I experienced something that’s an N-of-1 … doesn’t necessarily mean that that is the most important experience.” However, whether a particular call pays off or backfires, Breslow says, understanding “the implications it might have [for] others, the way that the message is likely to be received, the right time and way to deliver a message, all those things—while maybe insignificant in the moment—compound on themselves, and then I think can have a pretty profound effect on culture and the environment that you create in the clubhouse.”</p>
<p id="2VAmXq">On the other hand, Breslow points out, “What we’re looking for is not exclusively playing experience. It’s the things that we think <em>come</em> with playing experience.” If teams are looking for front-office leaders who are, as he recites, “relatable and personable and empathetic and smart and diligent and organized and disciplined,” then well-educated athletes who made it to the majors seem likely to fit the bill. But plenty of candidates who can’t hit a breaking ball (or throw one) check a bunch of those boxes too.</p>
<p id="fvZy3X">Plus, while dashing someone’s dreams isn’t fun for any boss, it can be extra painful for a former player to conduct the kinds of <a href="https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ecfe553a-ab8f-480a-9c4c-4de6e0a11271">difficult</a> <a href="https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/2ca9b117-f478-48c0-88e3-78f1f55f529c">conversations</a> that they once experienced from the other side. “Everybody remembers when they’re released,” Barfield says. “You remember exactly what you’re wearing, what you’re thinking, the room you were in.” Knowing how to handle dispensing bad news may make it easier to cushion the blow, but the burden of being the bearer of bad news makes for guilt-inducing role reversals. “The fact that you may see yourself in the person you’re talking to makes it even a little more uncomfortable,” Dipoto says. Fuld echoes that sentiment, saying, “It was and continues to be an adjustment for me, and I’m sure for other former players that have to deliver difficult news. You’re not often, if ever, a ‘bad guy’ as a teammate.” Young says that being the bad guy—albeit in the nicest way possible—“was one of the things I really was worried about when I took the job, is that those conversations with players, the hard conversations, and having been on the other end of them, I didn’t know how I would be able to handle those.”</p>
<p id="If2gav">Some conversations are hard not because they’re about cutting a player loose, but because they concern convincing a player to try something new and daunting. In theory, having been a big leaguer makes that an easier sell. “It’s just a little bit of instant credibility,” Kapler says. “‘I did this thing that we’re asking you to do, I made this adjustment that we’re asking you to make, I looked at these things that we’re asking you to look at, and here’s how it served me’ is a really nice sales pitch.” With more tools to help players improve, more prospects who are being <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2023/10/6/23906699/mlb-playoffs-baltimore-orioles-adley-rutschman-gunnar-henderson-jackson-holliday">promoted quickly</a>, and more emphasis on development at the major league level, the power of persuasion is increasingly valuable.</p>
<p id="qwH8mQ">Then again, that intrinsic power may have dissipated. Today’s players are accustomed to analyzing themselves and accepting feedback from coaches and analysts with nontraditional résumés, so it’s not a given that they’ll be wowed by the words of an ex-player GM (even if, unlike Herrmann with Dipoto, they realize they’re talking to one). And after the relative lull for former players in front-office positions of authority, the ex-player aura may have lost a little luster upstairs too, as Dipoto points out: “Maybe in the early 2000s, you go into a front office or an organizational meeting and you sit down with 50 baseball personnel—not players, but scouts, player development people. Being a former player gave you a sense of belonging, or you had hit some level of respect when you walked in the door. … I’m not sure that you have instant credibility anymore. You have to earn that. You’re starting fresh in a new job; you just happen to have a baseball card, and other guys don’t.” Per Barfield, “Players don’t care nowadays what you did. They care about how much you can help them.”</p>
<p id="kvGOPM">However, being a former big leaguer still helps forge connections to other former big leaguers. And because Beane, among others, helped dismantle the idea that front offices and field staffs operate semi-autonomously in separate spheres—“A manager is now an extension of the front office,” Breslow notes, which helps explains why former players like Kapler, Fuld, and A.J. Hinch have been courted in both capacities—GMs are in near-constant communication with managers and their ever-growing coaching staffs, where former players still predominate. “The benefits of collaboration with coaching staff and interfacing with players [have] grown increasingly important,” Fuld says; consequently, Breslow adds, so has “the ability to cut into that divide that otherwise could be a real hurdle.” Not that ex-player GMs and ex-player managers always get along, as Dipoto <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2015/07/01/jerry-dipoto-los-angeles-angels-resignation-mike-scioscia-general-manager-gm/29549927/">could</a> <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/news/jerry-dipoto-very-politely-says-working-with-mike-scioscia-was-a-pain-in-the-butt">confirm</a>.</p>
<p id="fIe2so">Professional baseball is a small world, and in some cases, GMs and managers or coaches have preexisting connections that get flipped as former players climb to the top of a front office. Beane had played in winter ball for Art Howe, who was managing in Oakland when Beane succeeded Alderson. “One year I’m playing in winter ball, next year I’m, technically, I guess, his boss,” Beane says. Bruce Bochy managed Young in San Diego; Young hired him in Texas. “I think I treat it like Boch is <em>my</em> boss,” Young jokes. Breslow and Red Sox manager Alex Cora were briefly teammates on the 2006 Sox; now they’re teammates in very different roles on the 2024 club. “We’re still building our relationship, but many of our conversations are just the way that two teammates would talk to each other,” Breslow says. “There’s an authenticity to that that’s just really difficult to replicate.”</p>
<p id="Tl6w54">Chumminess <em>can </em>lead to awkwardness when business and friendship intersect. When Breslow hired one of his best friends, Andrew Bailey, to be Boston’s pitching coach, they “had to talk through negotiating a salary and all of those things.” Honesty has been Breslow’s best policy: “I think we established early on, ‘Hey, if this is going to work, we need to be willing to have difficult conversations.’”</p>
<p id="OatwtV">Working with a pitching coach is, at least, a lot less inherently adversarial than, say, salary arbitration. In 1990, Beane and Mike Bordick were friends and teammates with the A’s in spring training; four years later, AGM Beane was <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sacramento-bee/137490111/">negotiating Bordick’s contract</a> in arbitration. “I think he found it more humorous,” Beane says. “I found it a little bit stressful.”</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="cbOEwR"><q>“For so long, it wasn’t players that really had a firm understanding of [analytics], but<strong> </strong>that stuff can be learned. What can’t be learned is the experiences that you have as a player and what you go through being on the mound, being in the box, the ups and downs, and the things that go on off the field.” —Josh Barfield</q></aside></div>
<p id="UehDS8">Flores knows the feeling. On the front-office side, he says, “Players aren’t comfortable always thinking of surplus value or trade value or diminishing age curves or arbitration value versus free agent value versus replacement level. Those are just sometimes terms that you’re uncomfortable with as a player, but you have to be fluent in them because that’s the operations side that you work with.” No one knows what a bummer arbitration can be better than a player who’s been through it. “Doing it from the other side,” Flores continues, “my only hope is that my counterpart understands that I do have empathy, and I do have understanding for that side, but that there’s a job to do on this side.”</p>
<p id="hyfZ8U">Getz, who joined the Royals front office shortly after his final season, says, “You have to be very mindful of how and what is being communicated to the players that you maybe have a history of being close to. So I was made aware of that early on and mentored in [how to] put your guard up.” On a more positive interpersonal front, former players come preprepared for fielding calls from agents. “If an agent is talking to you about a potential free agent or their own players within your organization, it’s a very fluid, easy conversation because you’ve probably had it 500 times before just through your playing days,” Getz says.</p>
<p id="vGzU1S">Moreover, shared membership in the brotherhood of baseball players often aids inter-team communications, just as it helps bridge the intra-team gulf between front office and field staff. Almost unanimously, ex-player execs agree that though they’ve forged strong bonds with rival execs who weren’t players—including some who previously employed <em>them</em>—the past experience of playing with or against a front-office counterpart is an automatic icebreaker. </p>
<p id="Q1qbph">“Sometimes it can be intimidating to call other clubs or other executives, especially when you’re new at the role,” Young admits. “They have different experiences, they’ve had different levels of success, and, to some degree, you’re trying to figure out what you’re doing and learning your way. And so when you have those former colleagues that you’ve played against, I think it does facilitate maybe easier relationships.” (It’s nice to know that even people who’ve pitched three scoreless extra innings to win a World Series game can feel anxious about a phone call.) Sometimes, these loose connections are codified into formalized matches. “As we go through the exercise of trying to assign contacts with the organizations, it’s just like, ‘Oh, obviously I’ve got that one; we played together,’” Breslow says.</p>
<p id="mAeH99">Young and Fuld’s on-field face-offs were fruitful for Fuld, who went 5-for-10 with two homers and a double against the tall righty, yielding the highest OPS he posted versus any pitcher he faced at least 10 times. (“Yeah, he was the one,” the glove-first Fuld jokes when reminded that he hit well against Young. “That’s it. It’s a short list.”) That history made their post-playing conversations more seamless, and years later, they linked up again on the first trade Fuld ever executed, a 2021 swap centered on Kyle Gibson, Ian Kennedy, and Spencer Howard. (Another hit for Fuld.) But even ex–major leaguers whose careers didn’t overlap can easily bond over having been in the bigs. When Dipoto talks to younger ex-player execs, he says, “I do feel some kind of connection because there’s only a certain number of people alive that got to do what we got to do.”</p>
<p id="pV4kJp">While they were doing that, though, there were some things that they <em>didn’t</em> get to do. “There’s a ton that, as a former player, I didn’t have exposure to that I’ve had to learn in the chair,” says Young, who benefited from a stint in the league office before he joined the Rangers. “Somebody who comes up through a front office may have more exposure to those things and not as much to locker room experiences that I had.” Or as Breslow puts it, “While I was playing, others were in a front office and gaining experience in negotiating or familiarity with the CBA.”</p>
<p id="FRC31Z">In earlier eras, when players were more often elevated to lofty front-office roles, Young notes, “the operation was smaller.” Now, ex-player GMs are tasked with managing hundreds of people—an unfamiliar challenge for individuals who spent their playing careers focusing almost exclusively, and obsessively, on their own performance. They’re also asked to serve as a spokesperson for an entire organization, not just themselves, and to oversee—and help budget for—departments they might have known little to nothing about when they were in uniform, such as international scouting, research and development, medical, and sports science. “I don’t necessarily think my having played made me a better decision-maker in terms of running the business,” Beane says.</p>
<p id="Zv8sIK">Even the aspects of running a team that they <em>were</em> familiar with turned out to be more complex than they would have suspected. “When I first came in on the development side, I had no appreciation for how much time and effort and thought goes into delivering each and every message to players,” Gomes says. “It is countless hours that go into a potentially five-to-10-minute conversation in making sure that everybody’s aligned and messaging the right thing.”</p>
<p id="UcW5e9">Thus, Young concludes, “Just because players understand aspects of the information or the analytics, there’s so much more that comes with running an organization and building a successful team. … It helps if you speak some of the language, but it doesn’t mean you have all the other aspects figured out.” Small wonder, then, that many of the ex-players refer to their first, faltering front-office steps as back-to-school-style immersion courses conducted by veteran mentors. “When players or ex-players came in or worked with us, I wanted them to immediately forget everything and the opinions they gathered as a player,” Beane says, adding, “and then ultimately over time, I think you bring your playing career back into it and your experiences, but I wanted guys to start from scratch.”</p>
<p id="uFiBYX">When Dombrowski was starting out, Hemond advised him, “You’re not going to learn about the game by staying in the office.” The older executive encouraged his protégé to travel with teams to fill in the blanks in his schooling in the sport. Now Dombrowski does the opposite for his player protégés who lack book learning, telling them, “Here’s a <a href="https://www.mlbplayers.com/_files/ugd/4d23dc_d6dfc2344d2042de973e37de62484da5.pdf">basic agreement</a>. Go ahead and read it. Here are the rules.”</p>
<p id="0O6w77">Based on his experience with ex-player execs, Friedman explains, “The cadence of a season, an offseason, is something that they can’t possibly have a feel for in advance of living it. Just how fluid the calendar is and just the different transactional points of the season and what all goes into that is eye-opening.” Once their eyes are open, they can pick their path. One of baseball’s breakthroughs in player development, Friedman says, has been “individualizing player plans” rather than forcing every athlete to conform to the core philosophies of a farm system. The same approach applies to the development of budding baseball execs. “We try to set up the onboarding on the front end to align with things that they know they’re interested in and then give them exposure to other things and get a feel from there what they’re most stimulated by and try to point more of their bandwidth in that direction.”</p>
<p id="XEl7BW">“I think the lack of experience is obvious,” Friedman says. “But I think on the flip side, the fresh perspective has a lot of value as well.”</p>
<p id="ZyeXKm">So that’s the reward for ballplayers who beat the odds by working their way up to the pinnacle of their profession and then decide to start a second career. They go back to being rookies and try to do it all over again.</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="VL9i1T">“Players today know there’s a path to these spots now that they’re seeing examples of it,” Flores says. How many more might want to walk it?</p>
<p id="8ZeKEm">To answer that question, it might help to examine what the current class has in common. Speaking of the discomfort with replacement level that Flores cited: Young is the only one of these 10 ex-player execs whose career WAR cracked double digits. Although many of them lasted a fairly long time in the majors, their places were rarely secure. “I was always that last man on the roster,” Flores says.</p>
<p id="RMJXDK">Maybe that’s not so surprising. Most major leaguers aren’t stars, and as Beane says, “Being world-class in multiple things is pretty rare.” And then there’s the not-so-small matter of money: A player who earned tens of millions or more may be less inclined to commit to another hectic, high-pressure occupation. “There is no Fourth of July family at the lake when you’re a player,” Flores says. “There is no, ‘I’m going to take a day and go to the wedding.’ There is no, ‘Hey, after school, happy hour with the parents from my kid’s second-grade class.’ That doesn’t exist for however long you play.” After those playing days are done, he adds, “A lot of players want a life that is absent the all-in nature required of these roles.”</p>
<p id="b9PTm6">But might their marginal talents (by big league standards) have helped set up their successful second acts? As they clung to careers on the fringes, Getz says, they “needed to exhaust all kind of areas to improve their game to survive. I think that there’s a level of—I don’t know if grit’s the right word, but a constant pursuit of improvement.”</p>
<p id="oSZkqZ">As a front-office executive, Gomes is “a star,” Friedman says. As a pitcher, he sometimes struggled to stay on Friedman’s Rays rosters. Those struggles made him smarter and more familiar with front-office machinations. When he’d get demoted to Triple-A, he would ask why, and the answer—the rotation needed rest, perhaps, and he had <a href="https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/minor-league-options">minor league options</a> remaining—taught him more about the business of baseball. “It just was a way to rationalize, like, ‘Oh, OK, I understand this,’” he says. And because his presence on the roster hung on a knife edge, he was always hungry to hear how he could avoid getting cut. “I was curious about: When I was successful, why was I successful? When I wasn’t, why was I not successful? And they were always open to sharing behind the curtain of why that was. Like, ‘Hey, you should lean on your slider more here.’ Or, ‘Hey, you should think about throwing this pitch less.’”</p>
<p id="D0sGCJ">Maybe it’s a matter of the right minds meeting on the right team at the right time. Velandia played for the A’s in the late ’90s and in 2000, when players had to walk at least 10 percent of the time to qualify for the franchise’s Player of the Month award in the minors (and earn some swag). “It got my mind into thinking, honestly, this is interesting,” he says. It’s not a coincidence, Fuld says, that a seemingly disproportionate number of analytically oriented ex-players once suited up for the forward-thinking Rays. (He, Gomes, and Diamondbacks special assistant to the GM <a href="https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2022/06/20/Technology/former-mlb-pitcher-burke-badenhops-diamondbacks.aspx">Burke Badenhop</a> were teammates in Tampa, and Kapler played there too.) “When I was there, we were shifting before most or any clubs were doing that; we were platooning in a way that was different than most or all<strong> </strong>clubs. … You can’t help but appreciate and connect those dots that some nontraditional, evidence-based decision-making [can] … help teams.”</p>
<p id="aOhXvG">But why did the spark catch in these particular players and not other A’s, Rays, or Dodgers? Friedman says, “The style in Tampa Bay, the style in Los Angeles, is to be open and sharing of information. And so for people who are curious, it definitely enhances that part of their brain with the access.” In other words, the curiosity comes first. Breslow didn’t become a chief baseball officer because his <a href="https://www.twinkietown.com/2017/2/18/14640976/craig-breslow-minnesota-twins-spring-training-the-reinvention-of">late</a>-<a href="https://www.twincities.com/2017/02/24/the-spins-the-thing-twins-craig-breslow-uses-tech-to-reboot-career/">career</a> <a href="https://deadspin.com/how-craig-breslow-used-science-to-engineer-his-way-back-1793232646">experiment</a> in remaking himself as a pitcher eased his transition to a front office. He became a chief baseball officer because he had the impulse to experiment in the first place. “You always wanted to find the answer,” Velandia says. “And that was, I think, the thing that we all have in common.”</p>
<p id="MuAD9F">Friedman says that while a previous relationship with an especially open-minded player “definitely sticks with you,” he doesn’t actively scout inquisitive players as future front-office material. “I prefer it to be more driven from them once their career is over and then take the conversation from there. [I] don’t want to ever be in a position where I’m trying to talk someone into doing this, because it’s obviously a huge commitment.” But Breslow says teams do monitor and recruit potential execs-in-waiting. “Whether we’re willing to admit that or not, it does happen.”</p>
<p id="Z0lR5J">Whether the link between pedestrian playing performance and superior performance in front offices is correlative or causative, those on-field failures pay dividends down the road. “I wasn’t nearly as good as essentially everybody on our major league team,” Gomes says, referring to the current Dodgers roster. “So there’s a humbling factor, and I think you never forget how hard the game is.” Nor do you ever stop imparting that takeaway to others. “My experience as a player really helped me, in general, with my own staff as we made decisions, to remind them how difficult the game is,” Beane says. “And all I had to do was pull up my stats to remind them how difficult it was. ‘You guys, look how bad I was. It’s really hard.’” (It’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzDYgRc6eic">incredibly hard</a>.)</p>
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<p id="OyYiOC">One thing seems certain: Ex-player execs beget more ex-player execs. Stewart hired Barfield; former Phillie (and Phillies GM) Rubén Amaro Jr. hired Velandia. In addition to bringing in Barfield, who had been the Diamondbacks’ farm director, Getz has anointed <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/06/07/boston-red-sox-brian-bannister-mvp-machine">Brian Bannister</a> as senior adviser to pitching and Paul Janish as director of player development (Getz’s old job). And the Dodgers, having seemingly struck front-office gold with Gomes, have recently <a href="https://theathletic.com/5111481/2023/12/04/chris-archers-dodgers-special-assistant/">loaded up</a> on ex-player advisers and assistants such as Tyson Ross, Nelson Cruz, and Chris Archer. “I think it’s a good thing for baseball when people that have been involved in the game for really our entire lives, at least our work lives, stick around,” Dipoto says.</p>
<p id="kzYG59">In an earlier era, the pipeline of ex-players funneled to front offices and coaching staffs smacked of boys’ club cliquishness. Perhaps it still does. “When you start hiring people just because they played or not, or that being the first thing on your checklist, then really bright executives like Kim Ng don’t get the opportunity,” Beane says.</p>
<p id="lhKHZj">However, we’re so far removed from the days when teams shunned non-players that the power imbalance between those who did and didn’t play has been inverted. As I wrote in 2019, “Although it’s a sign of progress that nonplayers are no longer excluded from the team-running ranks, front offices have swung so far in the other direction that they’ve merely traded one type of homogeneity for another.” Entrusting top jobs to players has become, in effect, a means of promoting diversity—but only one kind of diversity. </p>
<p id="ghZLnJ">Many of the players who’ve gotten these gigs are demographically indistinguishable from the non-players who’ve tended to: <a href="https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/37841932/mlb-continue-improving-racial-gender-hiring-practices">white, male</a>, and <a href="https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/27861/outta-left-field-the-actual-facts-of-the-gm-demographic-shift/">Ivy League educated</a>. Breslow went to Yale, Young went to Princeton, and Fuld went to Stanford. “Ultimately, we want to live in this world where the results speak for themselves and diversity of backgrounds and ethnicity and thought are not just respected, but highly sought after,” Breslow says. “I think we’re getting there, but it takes a deliberate and intentional approach to building that out because otherwise, you end up with a lot of people who all look the same, figuratively. The irony here is: As a player, I was unique because I went to Yale, and as a GM, I’m unique because I played baseball.”</p>
<p id="rKQObu">Dipoto believes that “the next group will look a little bit more diverse … in race or gender, it will look a little bit more diverse in background, because that’s the way we evolve as a society, as a game. … Slowly but surely, we’re evolving in a positive direction. I would love it to happen quicker, but I do believe that the return of the former player as a general manager [is a] very positive thing in the game.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="96zN1a">Maybe the most positive sign is that Velandia—MLB’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/sports/baseball/jorge-velandia-venezuela-phillies.html">first Venezuela-born AGM</a>—Gomes, Flores, and Barfield don’t fit the largely lily-white, elite-educated mold. “You’d love to see that continue to grow, specifically with minorities,” Barfield says. “I think that it has gotten better the last four or five years from where it was, probably. A little slower than most of us would hope.” Barfield wants to be a GM, and not just because he’d enjoy the job. “I think it’d be really cool to be able to tell people, ‘I graduated from University of Phoenix and was able to get this. You don’t have to have the fancy degree. You just really have to just want to learn and grow and have that hunger for knowledge.’” And although you don’t have to have played ball, it might help, for the first time in a while.</p>
<p id="vNreHm"><em>Thanks to</em><a href="https://twitter.com/kennyjackelen"><em> Kenny Jackelen</em></a> <em>of Baseball Reference for research assistance.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2024/2/16/24074641/baseball-general-manager-front-office-former-players-jerry-dipoto-chris-youngBen Lindbergh