Dispatches, Vol. 3 (March 2024)
Ohtani in the middle of a Venn diagram, Messi at the top of the payroll, and more from March.
This month, the sports-friends-subscribers intersection brought me some intriguing bits from real life to share here. I’d love to make this a regular part of the monthly dispatches edition of Thrill Shot, so feel free to talk to me or send a message about whatever part of the sports universe makes you curious in April. Here’s dispatches from two conversations, a convo-text combo and a Friday in the game room.
Travis asked me about my Ohtani take. I read Tisha Thompson’s original ESPN story on the Los Angeles Dodgers firing Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s interpreter, after allegations of “massive theft” and gambling debts. I listened to Thompson on ESPN Daily, and as the story evolved, I read newsletter responses from baseball writers Joe Posnanski, Molly Knight and Craig Calcaterra.
At this point, the end of this Foolish Baseball tweet encapsulates my basic thoughts: “WE’VE ALL READ THE SAME ARTICLES.” The story settled after Ohtani read a statement to media members without taking questions and his representatives declined comment on how they’ve gone about reporting the theft of $4.5 million to authorities. I told Travis that I needed to find the championship angle in all of this while reporting and investigations continue.
Here’s where I’m at: The Ohtani situation rests in the middle of a Venn diagram made of three concurrent eras in baseball history.
The Dodgers Perpetual Playoff Era. Eleven straight playoff appearances. Five 100-win seasons in the last seven years. The owners and executives have created a juggernaut that will continue to win baseball games. They’ve adjusted to departing free agents, adapted due to injuries, allowed prospects to slot in next to All-Stars and MVPS, and captured a single World Series title.1 If you had to predict the next time the Dodgers will miss the playoffs, in an era of six playoff teams per league, how long would you give them? Five years? The length of Ohtani’s ten-year contract? Beyond?
The Functionally Infinite Wealth Era. They added Ohtani and his compatriot Yoshinobu Yamamoto for a billion dollars. This sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not. We’ve piled so many of our choices and so much of our attention into the sports sphere over the past 150 years that the amount of money being committed to the best athletes in the world has stopped making sense. One billion dollars. The Dodgers owners, executives and analysts saw it as the right decision for baseball and business. That expenditure sticks out in an era of mega contracts in multiple sports that get measured in the hundreds of millions.
The Legalized Sports Gambling Era. I took a break while writing this to go downstairs and turn on the Saturday afternoon Braves game on the MLB.tv. The first commercial was for bet365. The CGI ad behind both batter’s boxes in Philadelphia: BETMGM. Here we are — where we’ve always been? One of my favorite baseball books is John Thorn’s history of the game before 1900, “Baseball in the Garden of Eden.” Thorn points out that gambling is one of the “essential ingredients” that expands local games into sports with national followings because wagering is a measurable way that adults register interest. He also points out that gambling helped the formation of rules and statistics (you need to verify what happened to determine the winner of a bet), and that one of the early guidelines adopted by organized clubs was prohibiting involvement in bets on the games. Gambling is both engine and obstacle.
There’s more to know about what happened, and there’s more to come in terms of how an interpreter, an illegal sportsbook and large wire transfers connect to the championship aims of a consistently top-tier team. Right now, I’m sad that we’re in that overlap because I just want to be amazed by whatever Ohtani does in what everyone anticipated would be the post-Tungsten Arm O’Doyle chapter of his career.2
Dan and I talked about following MLS, and we ended up wondering about the salaries of the players Lionel Messi passes to in Miami. Here’s a visualization of last year’s player compensation for Inter Miami. Highlighted players are on the roster this season. I believe Luis Suarez replaced Josef Martinez in that second slot, which will be confirmed when the 2024 salary guide comes out. Dan, Messi earns, um, a lot, even compared to the cadre of former FC Barcelona teammates who joined him on the Herons.3 We’ll see how this turns into wins, points and trophies in Inter Miami’s first full season with Messi.
When John D. and I chatted about finally witnessing an exciting Formula 1 race, I already knew what happened in the Australian Grand Prix4. I know John watches races with his family, and I’m good at not giving anything away. I’d already seen the most shocking news of that weekend’s Formula 1 race in the most internet way: an Instagram reel.
In my feed, a video popped up in which a girl asks about a more satisfying sound, then shakes her iced coffee cup. Someone stitched that clip to Verstappen’s Red Bull car limping along, smoking, and the announcers exclaiming “Verstappen is out of the race!”
“There hasn’t been one of those races in over a year,” John texted me after catching up on the results. “Of course, I would love to see Max beaten fair and square, but, unfortunately, I don’t think that’ll be a regular thing yet.”
I’ve only watched races in which Max Verstappen’s lead is like a dad playing Mario Kart against his kids.5 Without wishing engine problems on anyone, I’d like to get the chance to watch a full race full of tension and uncertainty to get a better feel for the excitement of the sport.
John W., Brad and I built basketball dynasties. We spent a Friday playing board games, which included filling rosters during a six-season championship window to win as many trophies as possible.6 My Basket Boss squad ended up with bizarro versions of some recognizable legends. Go Ants!
This game captures a couple of aspects of real sports dynasties.
The stars on each line represent the quality of that player in a given season. Teams don’t always get five-star years from star players. Every real team architect hopes that they did enough to collect enough stars across their roster to outpace their competitors in a given year while also being mindful of seasons to come.
Analytics parses data to determine the best moves, and the stars in Basket Boss make for an interesting analog to the projections used by the best teams. As Basket Boss players age up, you, the general manager, see the information on their improvement or their decline and adjust your strategy. In the real world, we have no idea how many five-star seasons Patrick Mahomes has left or whether Mike Trout’s greatness will ever overlap with enough goodness from other players. But one of the defining aspects of modern sports is the exploration of what data can tell us about furture performance and probable outcomes.
Updates & Thrills from this month
Treble hunting update for the NCAA women’s tournament
“Realistically, we’re looking at a pair of powerhouse programs potentially adding a treble to their legacy in a month.”
What I said before the women’s tournament is still true: South Carolina and UConn can claim three trophies this season. The women’s tournament delivered few upsets in the first two rounds. Every other team that captured a league and conference tournament trophy was seeded ninth or lower in a tournament that generated very few upsets. The Gamecocks moved on to the Final Four on Sunday, and UConn plays Duke on Monday.
One double-digit seed survived March Madness and made it to April
“People think it’s supposed to happen right away. It took us a little time to get clicking on both ends of the floor and understanding scouting reports.”
What North Carolina State men’s head coach Kevin Keatts said after their first round upset of Texas Tech is still true: the Wolfpack is clicking. They surged ahead of Duke7 on Sunday and booked a flight to Phoenix to face No.1 Purdue on Saturday.
I’d like to use Thrill Shot to get better at spotting the why behind the obvious numbers like a nine-game winning streak or how many points D.J. Burns, Jr. scores each night. For one, the Wolfpack flow through Burns. To watch them play is to watch them feed No. 30 and let him post-up or pass out. But what changed? They lost seven of their last nine regular season games. This appears to be evolution the way Pokemon games use the term to refer to an immediate and obvious improvement. I’m curious about what changed to make the 10th place team in the ACC into a team that understands and executes what it does well.
Moments from March
Ohio State topped Wisconsin in the women’s college hockey Frozen Four to claim a national title. That’s two in three seasons for the Buckeyes.
Poland scored one more penalty than Wales to complete the Euro 2024 field for this summer.
The saddest snub of the 2024 men’s tournament, the Indiana State Sycamores, earned a spot in the NIT Final Four for the first time.
The US men’s national team earned a CONCACAF Nations League three-peat with the most USA-Mexico score possible: dos a cero.
Opening Day for last year’s AL and NL champs went well. The Rangers fought back from a blown call to walk-off the Chicago Cubs, and the Diamondbacks scored two touchdowns in one inning against the Colorado Rockies.
That’s the first quarter of 2024. Take a break. Stay hydrated. I’ll be back soon with some projects I’ve been working on for a while. Thanks for a great first three months! We’ve almost got a full field of 64 subscribers. That’s not a normal milestone, but it feels like one around here because it’s the ideal bracket number.
Some people, as well as my own favorite team’s mascot, discount the 2020 title, because it came after a 60-game season. It makes for good inter-team social media banter, and I love Blooper, but I’m not ignoring these facts about that Dodgers team. First, that title was sandwiched between teams that won 106 games in 2019 and 2021. Second, when the Braves went up 3-1 on LA in the NLCS, I thought it would probably be the high point of the season because those Dodgers were that good. Third, I know what it’s like to watch a team consistently be great but fall short all but once in over a decade. You take what you can get. And finally, that baseball season was one of the best aspects of a dark and difficult pandemic year, so I’m grateful they played at all and would never take away something great that happened during the pandemic from anyone.
I would’ve guessed Flamingos, but nope. It’s Herons. Forward Madison is the Flamingos.
I would love to embed the race highlights for you, but F1 has restricted access to that content on Substack, according to the “Video Unavailable” notice.
It’s me. Hi. I’m the dad, it’s me.
Building a team is my favorite thing to do in a board or video game. Future baseball? Vikings in a ship? Soldiers defending against an extraterrestrial invasion? Yes, yes and yes.
That’s two wins over the Blue Devils in the Wolfpack’s postseason winning streak.
Favorite analogy: “Max Verstappen’s lead is like a dad playing Mario Kart against his kids”
That’s probably the most accurate description I’ve heard. Even better was the footnote😂