Interview: Bradford William Davis, Reporter for Insider, on the Latest MLB Headlines
In this episode, Jessica Luther speaks to Bradford William Davis, an investigations reporter for Insider, about the MLB season so far, including the response to Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 80-game suspension for using a performance-enhancing substance, if Aaron Judge is actually chasing a home run record, and how the Baltimore Orioles’ have succeeded at tanking.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. Jessica here. We know that we are neglectful of baseball on Burn It All Down, and have had requests from listeners to cover it more often. I won't make any promises going forward, but we are definitely going to talk baseball today. Right now I'm joined by Bradford Davis, an investigative journalist with Insider, who has written about the failures at USA Fencing around reports of sexual assault, issues at RAINN, the top US organization for victims of sexual violence, and, in lighter fare, about the MLB using two different types of baseballs during last year's season. He is a born and bred New Yorker and a huge baseball fan. Bradford, welcome to Burn It All Down.
Bradford: Yo, thank you for having me.
Jessica: All right. So, I wanna get our biases out of the way immediately. Who's your favorite team in baseball? Who do you root for?
Bradford: I grew up a Yankees fan. My relationship to the rooting part of it is different, in part because I just didn't like dealing with trolls, or like, “Oh, you biased,” you know, whenever I report something negative at the team. You know, I am so happy when the Yankees do well. That's what I'll say publicly on the record. [laughter]
Jessica: That was such a diplomatic answer!
Bradford: In the privacy of my own home, it may be a little different. Yeah.
Jessica: You're like crying in the privacy of your own home.
Bradford: Yeah.
Jessica: Or standing on your couch. Okay. So, you know this, our listeners know this, I'm not a baseball person, I think is like a fair assessment of me. But I do know that we're deep into the current season. So I thought this would be like a good moment to check in. And so I'm just gonna throw a giant question at you. At this point, what have been some of the biggest headlines this season? Or maybe even just like, what are the ones you are following?
Bradford: Man, the biggest recent narrative was probably the Fernando Tatís Jr. suspension for performance enhancing drugs. That’s, you know, kind of undeniable, and that's in the ether right now. Otherwise, I mean, it's been a pretty chill and non-controversial season, I would say, on the major league level. I mean, there's been stuff with, you know, minor leaguers not get getting paid well, or the league dismissing their righteous struggle for a living wage. You know, things of that nature. But I mean, the Dodgers are still great. The Mets are back. That's actually a big deal.
Jessica: Okay. Okay.
Bradford: But, you know, it's always hard, even with that kind of stuff, right? Like, here in New York – I'm actually from Queens. So like, you know, it is a big deal that the Mets are great. But even though there's some level of national appeal to that, baseball is so regional, right? It's so hyper local. Like, you know, you follow your team and you follow the 26 guys in your team, but like, you may not know what exactly what's going on outside of stuff in your division, in part because there's so many games, I think, you know? It's like, it's just genuinely hard to keep in touch with like every single team, especially teams that are not juggernauts, you know? But the Mets are back, and that's cool, because they've been mediocre or bad for most of anyone's lifetime. [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah. I feel like that's really all I know about them.
Bradford: All lifetime, all lifetimes actually. But they are really good. They have an owner who was an evil finance guru, but he's using his evil for a small sliver of good, which is making the Mets good. [laughter] They spend a lot of money, and they have a really, really strong team that maybe will win the World Series. So the vibes are strong there. But the teams that are expected to be strong, and juggernauts are still strong – the Yankees, even though the Yankees are terrible of late. The defending champion Braves, the Dodgers, and yeah, I guess, you know, the Padres were supposed to be alongside them because they just traded for Juan Soto, another big storyline. Juan Soto, a great, great, great player, who was very foolishly traded by his very cheap team, the Washington Nationals. Or his increasingly cheap team, because they're preparing for a sale. But once they got Juan Soto back, they learned that Fernando Tatís was no longer gonna be on that team. So, that really deflated their chances of going far into playoffs. So, you know, that is, I think, baseball at large. Certainly there'll be, you know, more storylines to come. Hopefully some that I will help report, but… [laughs]
Jessica: Ooh, that's a good tease. I like it.
Bradford: Yeah. That's a good tease. [laughter]
Jessica: Can we start with then Fernando Tatís Jr? Because I feel like he might be one of the few baseball players that could maybe pick out of a lineup if you showed me a bunch of pictures. Like, he's bigger than baseball in that sense. So as you mentioned, earlier this month, he was suspended for 80 games after he tested positive for Clostebol. Am I saying that right?
Bradford: I don't know.
Jessica: Okay.
Bradford: [laughs] I’ve only read that word.
Jessica: Okay. Clostebol, it's an anabolic steroid, some kind of performance enhancing substance, which is banned by the MLB. Tatís Jr, he said he took a medication for ringworm that included Clostebol, that it was his mistake. He's not appealing it. So, how did the baseball world respond to the news that he had been suspended?
Bradford: I think it's like 50% genuine disappointment and 50% “I told you so.”
Jessica: Oh, really?
Bradford: The disappointment comes from a lot of people who love him because he is a great, great player, man. Like, he's so exciting. He's one of the few players that, yes, someone like you could pick out of a lineup, because he's that big a deal to the game. He's very much one of the few faces of Major League Baseball at this point, you know? And he's one that's faced domestically, in part because his team is good, or expected to be good, you know, he's a lot of fun. And he speaks English very well too, you know, which helps. Like, Shohei Ohtani does have that language barrier, which can be domestically an issue, you know, and internationally it's huge. So I'm not trying to shade Shohei Ohtani. But yeah, so, Tatís is amazing. So yeah, a lot of his fans were really just sad that it happened, you know? But then of course Fernando Tatís has had, for some fair reasons, some unfair reasons, a reputation of being immature. Sometimes the immaturity is judged over, I think, fairly non-consequential things, like say swinging on a 3-0 pitch while up, you know, many runs, which actually happened in 2020.
Jessica: That's right. I feel like Brenda burned how people reacted to that, because that sounds very familiar to me now.
Bradford: Right. Yeah. There was a 3-0 count and he hit a grand slam, even though his team was already blowing out.
Jessica: He broke the unwritten rules.
Bradford: Yeah. He broke an unwritten rule – rules that no one can really agree on anyway. And he got slammed by, you know, both the opposing manager and his own manager, and you know, whatever. But I guess that sort of iconoclasm that makes him willing to, you know, flaunt a potentially unwritten rule for the good of his team is also the kind that will have him riding motorcycles and crashing them repeatedly on the offseason, which is actually why he hasn't played all year. It’s not the PEDs.
Jessica: Oh. He got injured from a motorcycle crash?
Bradford: Things like that, which like, hey, you know, maybe don't, you know, if you keep on falling off your bike and getting hurt, maybe stop doing that, you know? Maybe be upfront about it too. Which was another issue, you know, not properly disclosing that. And then of course now the PED violation, which is a shame given that, you know, he's already secured a lifetime mega contract, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's not like he needs this PED, you know, or needs this chemical or whatever to be great, you know? And he also is literate enough, both in English and Spanish, with which to understand the joint drug agreement – which is complicated, admittedly, you know, but like, he could understand it, or ask someone for help if he's like, hey, got this medicine, should I take it? You know, that's kind of where the immaturity stuff kind of factors in. And I think there's some merit to it.
Some of it is, of course, like all these kind of discussions, somewhat racialized by him being a young boisterous Dominican kid. The conversations always get tainted in that way, which is unfortunate. So you can't have like a level of conversation on where he messed up versus magnifying it as some sort of like larger statement. I actually overheard a scout the other day actually talking about like how, you know, “You can't trust, like, most of these Dominican athletes.” Like, “Can you think of one who's signed like a long term deal and it paid off?” [Jessica gasps] And then he goes on to say to whoever he's talking to, he's like, “You know, the only ones who did had strong fathers in the home.”
Jessica: Oh no!
Bradford: And, you know, it's just like, again, obviously having good dads in a home is really helpful for making good decisions when you're a multimillionaire. But like, I don't like how you said it! [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah, that's not…
Bradford: And I don't like that you applied it to an entire nation of athletes here, you know? So yeah, if I can give a roundabout sort of description, again, a lot of people really love him and care about him and and just want to see more Fernando Tatís. A lot are frustrated about the way he conducts himself for both legitimate reasons and for, you know, unfair ones as well.
Jessica: Yeah. And I read – just correct me if I'm wrong – but so he got the 80 games, so that'll be the end of the season if the Padres make the playoffs, those games would count against him, and it'll go into the next season.
Bradford: Yeah. It's gonna go in the next season. And also you're automatically disqualified from the playoffs from that year, whatever year he gets suspended.
Jessica: Ah, so we're not gonna see him for a good while then.
Bradford: No, we're not seeing him til next year. Assuming he doesn't crash his bike, again. [laughter]
Jessica: Zing. Where is the baseball discussion around PEDs at this point? Is it just like, ugh, it is a thing? Because it was such a thing for a while, and now…
Bradford: It's still bigger than you other sports.
Jessica: You feel like that? Yeah.
Bradford: Yeah. Like in the NFL, right? Like, you know, you get busted for steroids. It's like, oh, you know, you take your four games [laughs] and then you go back and you play. You know, and maybe you're taking steroids. Maybe you're not.
Jessica: Doesn’t kind of matter what you do.
Bradford: Yeah. Right. No, it's like, honestly, it's probably better for your body. [laughs] You take your steroids, you get suspended.
Jessica: Yeah. And you survive.
Bradford: And you have four games without getting hit in the head.
Jessica: Yeah. You know, but still, so it's a bigger deal, you feel like baseball…
Bradford: Yeah. It’s a way bigger deal in baseball. I think that there is far less moralizing than there once was. Which isn't to say there isn't a lot of moralizing.
Jessica: Yeah.
Bradford: The culture around Major League Baseball cares deeply about the perceived and very inconsistent definition of integrity around its game. So like, the stats have to really mean something, you know? The records have to really mean something. It's a big deal right now that Aaron Judge has a decent chance at hitting 60 or more home runs this year, which would be the first time anyone's done it cleanly – perceived cleanly, you know – since Roger Maris in the early 60s. You know, ignoring that Roger Maris just started playing in the integrated era so he did not have to deal with, you know, many, many other nationalities, you know, and the whole hoards of talent coming. And he just, yeah, he got in on that, you know, so he had a somewhat easier environment, I would say, you know, to hit 60 home runs, but whatever. But that is how baseball folks think, right?
It's like, you know, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds. And even though A-Rod never hit 60 in a season, A-Rod, you know, et cetera, they did it dirty, and now Aaron Judge has the chance to do it clean. So like, it's a really big deal that even though he's not even gonna break a record technically, right? The fact that he's going to break the unofficial record, in many people's hearts, you know, clean, is a big deal. However, of course, I think sort of parallel to the way our country has moralized less about drugs as we had an epiphany about five years ago that white people also get addicted [laughs] to the same drugs that Black people do, you know, and that white lives could also be ruined by that.
There's been a change in sort of the rhetoric and desire to push more restorative and decriminalize sort of approaches towards dealing with our country's drug problem. And so I think that that has somewhat seeped into, you know, to Major League Baseball as well. And you know, to baseball in defense, like, if I'm not mistaken, they don't test for things like marijuana, for example, which they once did. And then I think also because these suspensions have ratcheted up significantly in intensity, I think that there are way less people using performance enhancing drugs than there once was, because there's so much at stake, and if you get caught, that can derail your entire career. If you get caught…Like, you get caught once, it's a half a season. You get caught twice, it's a whole season. Get caught three times, I think you're done.
Jessica: That is so interesting. Thanks for bringing up Aaron Judge, because I was gonna ask you what was going on, because I mean, I'm on Twitter too much. And so I kept seeing all these tweets about like, “He's gonna break a record,” “No, he's not.” So, he is gonna cleanly – quote unquote, until we find out later or whatever – he's the perceived cleanliness, he's gonna break this record. But it's really Barry Bonds’ record that exists, right?
Bradford: Yes. Barry Bonds has the record for hitting 73 home runs, followed by Mark McGwire at 70. Sammy had, you know, hit in the sixties a couple times, like three times, actually. And then there's Roger Maris who had 61.
Jessica: Okay. So that's this record that everyone's tweeting about.
Bradford: That is the official. However, we also know that Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are either admitted or are very likely to have used performance enhancing drugs as they broke those records. So I understand people's trepidation about it. I do, you know, but those are the official records. Aaron Judge just has the perception of cleanliness because he has never failed a test, you know? And so good for him, honestly. Happy that he'll be able to be in that conversation for greatest home run hitters ever if he is able to cross that 60 home run plateau.
Jessica: Hmm. Okay. Well now I understand. I feel like that was a Yes Yes No kind of situation for me, if anyone listens to Reply All, [laughter] where I just did not understand the conversation that people were having about it. I did wanna ask you about…So you talked about the Mets are back. Dodgers are great. Yankees are doing well. Padres, maybe, we'll see. But one of the things that I keep seeing are the Orioles.
Bradford: Yes, that's right.
Jessica: So like, there was an ESPN headline that was literally like, ‘Are the Baltimore Orioles for real?’ So I wanna ask you, like, are they?
Bradford: [laughs] You know, man, I don't know. [laughter] I know it's like six weeks left in the season, but–
Jessica: It’s like, do people want them to be? Like–
Bradford: Yeah. So, I mean, a little context for the Orioles as well is actually the Seattle Mariners, if we’re talking about storylines, two teams that are like always bad. The Mariners are in a playoff spot seeded right now, which would be the first time in 20 years, 21 years.
Jessica: [gasps] Wow. Love, love that.
Bradford: But at least the Seattle Mariners aren’t catching you by total surprise because they played competitive baseball until the very last day of the season where they were eliminated, you know, so there was a chance they could have made it last year, but now they're going. It’s on. The Orioles however have been really historically terrible. They've been garbage, and they've been garbage by design. As you know, in other sports, you know, like the NBA, really the first to really proliferate it, but–
Jessica: Tanking? Is that where you're taking me?
Bradford: Exactly. Major League Baseball has, you know, followed suit. NFL too, for that matter, you know? But like, you know, but yes, tanking. But like, not like just normal rebuilds, not just one season of being terrible and then hoping for a good draft pick, like the Spurs did before they got Tim Duncan.
Jessica: The process!
Bradford: Process level, Sam Hankie style. We're gonna be bad, you know, indefinitely, [Jessica laughs] until we have enough people that we think are stars, and then maybe we might try. The Orioles have done that to a new and crazy level. Even this year. They traded a lot of…They traded a few of their good players at the trade deadline this year, despite being in shouting distance of a playoff spot, because they didn't feel that the odds were high enough to actually go for it, which frustrated a lot of people.
Jessica: Wow.
Bradford: But a funny thing happened. They kept winning. [laughs] They've been winning. They won they won last night against the Red Sox, who were supposed to be much better than them this year, but they've kind of just been a squishy mediocre team all year. But the Orioles do have a lot of young players. They starting to graduate their best prospects. They have this catcher named Adley Rutschman – I probably pronounced that last name wrong, apologies to Burn It All Down fan Adley Rutschman. [laughter] But Adley Rutschman, you know, he's a great catcher, great young catching talent. He's 24 years old. He's a rookie. And he has almost immediately looked like he belonged in the league, which is a big deal. And it's very hard to do that as a catcher, because it's a very difficult position to learn. It's why a lot of people move off the position in their thirties because it beats 'em up too much.
And a lot of people can't hack it because it requires being very intelligent with, you know, managing a game and like, you know, being able to understand the situation at all times, you know, know what every pitcher throws. And remember, pitchers are throwing 99 mile an hour fast balls, 92 mile an hour sliders, they're going left and right up and down. And he's able to manage all of that quite well, especially for a rookie, while also hitting well. So, he may win rookie of the year. So, they’re starting to see some of their young players perform well on a major league level. And they seem to be teaching some of the pitching that they found how to pitch well, which is I think the issue the organization had, is that they had given up good players during a rebuild, like by accident almost. [laughs] Which is kind of a problem. Like, you know, you're supposed to be able to identify the talent that you have, you know, if you're gonna be in a hard rebuild. But I'd say the sad thing for fans is that tanking actually does kind of work.
Jessica: Yeah.
Bradford: We've seen that with…Not always, but you know, but the Houston Astros also had a similar kind of tank job, you know? They won the World Series – again, not in the cleanest method, but the talent there is undeniable. Chicago Cubs the year before that, you know, but then they started spending once they realized they were close to being good. And then they won the World Series. And now here we have Baltimore, you know, ready to ready to shine as well. And so I feel for the fans who have suffered through multiple, you know, 105 to 10 lost seasons of this just completely garbage, completely incompetent team, finally kind of learning how to win a little bit and play meaningful baseball late in the season. That is cool for them. I am sad for a sport that incentivizes being absolutely terrible, not even trying to compete at all, and that being a path towards victory.
I think that the big problem, Jessica, which is I think more pronounced perhaps in MLB than the NBA, is that there are other ways to win, you know, in MLB. Like, you can go out and just sign lots of good players. You know, you can go out and spend lots of money and, you know, there's the draft. You can do those kinds of things. But the cheapest way to win is the thing. [laughter] Because minor leaguers don't make any money, your best prospects – you know, I mean, besides the signing bonuses, they make as much as anyone else. You know, you don't have to shell out 300 million dollars on like, say, Gerrit Cole to lead your rotation. You just kind of hope that you develop one.
And I understand, you know, obviously there's always benefits of like developing your own homegrown stars versus going out and getting one. But again, it is not the only, not even the best, but it is the cheapest. And that is what frustrates me watching the Orioles win, [laughs] because I'm like, I don't want anyone else to be like, hmm, let's try that, and let's submerge our team for five to ten years and hope we have a victory as well. And to give you example of the other side of this, the Detroit Tigers are terrible, and they've also tanked in a similar way to Orioles. Maybe not quite as extreme, but still pretty bad. They have not been good since 2017. And they have nothing to show for it. They just fired the GM earlier this year. But like, you know, nothing's happening there.
Jessica: Oh man. Well, before I let you go, this has been…I’ve learned so much, so thank you. Going into the back end of the season, we're gearing up for the playoffs. They start in early October. What teams, what players should we be paying attention to? Especially those of us like me, who…I will show up for the playoffs. I'm one of those fair weather people. So, obviously now I'm gonna be rooting for Baltimore, but like, who else?
Bradford: Honestly, I think the Mets are super fun. A fun group of like goobers.
Jessica: [laughs] What do you mean? Tell me more about goobers.
Bradford: They had this name where whenever they have a walkoff, like, the shirt always gets torn off. So Pete Alonso, who is like this burly but kind of soft man, you know, who has hit his share of walkoffs. Like, if you watch a Mets walkoff, you're gonna see this man walk around with his shirt off. [laughs]
Jessica: I'm gonna be Googling this as soon as we get off here. So I will be seeing this.
Bradford: But they have an incredible front of the rotation. Two guys that you'll see in the playoffs a lot are Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom, two guys you’ll actually see this week playing against the Yankees in the Subway Series, which is the New York versus New York matchup. Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom, they're two Hall of Famers. They have amazing stuff. Remember I talked about hundred mile fastballs and 92 mile an hour sliders? That’s Jacob deGrom, while Max Scherzer just has like the most angriest “I hate you” demeanor on the mound for however long he's playing. I wish that we could mic him up. [Jessica laughs] But we wouldn't be able to broadcast MLB games on like, you know, national television. It has to be on like Showtime or something, because you just watch him like cussing people out, like behind his glove. You know, like it's not even about the hitter. It's about like, you know–
Jessica: Yeah. How he pumps himself up.
Bradford: Like operating hate, you know, for however long he needs to throw. But yeah, they're both like great big game pitchers, you know, and then they have Francisco Lindor who is one of the most wonderful, joyous players to watch. You know, they call him Mr. Smile, because he's always smiling. He's their starting shortstop. To give you a good example of like, you know, of winning without tanking, the Mets traded for him because he was about to become a free agent, and they signed him to mega deal rather than just kind of like collapsing their team and selling it off for spare parts. They're like, no, we're gonna build here. We're gonna build around this guy through free agency and through the trades, and it's paying off. He won't win the MVP award, but he'll finish in the top 10, I think. But he's fundamental to, I think, a positive culture there. You know, where there's joy and encouragement rather than just kind of like tearing people down.
Jessica: Yeah.
Bradford: And he's super clutch. He plays very defense. Yeah. The New York Mets are a really fun team to watch. I mean, I'm biased because it's the hometown area, but like, as someone who gets to catch a lot of their games and everything, I'm very glad that New York is served well by a fun team like them.
Jessica: This has been great, Bradford. Please tell our listeners how they can find you and your work out there on the internet?
Bradford: Got you. So yeah, so like I said, I'm at Insider. The last big story I did, which is, you know, not a headline yet, I guess, this year, but was about Major League Baseball quietly using two different balls. You could find that if you Google Major League Baseball two balls, or my name, Bradford William Davis. You will find that story. It's probably the most prominent thing I've done. So, you know, I am working on a follow up at the moment, but you know, we'll see. We'll see what I find. And yeah, so you can catch me there. You can catch me on Twitter where I'm posting religiously and relentlessly at @BWDBWDBWD because those are my initials. I am on IG as well, not as often, but @BWD.PNG like the image file, et cetera. I'm trying out TikTok. We'll see. [laughs]
Jessica: Oh!
Bradford: I had to watch out after that millennial pause though, right? [laughs] Or else I was gonna get cooked by these youngins. But hopefully just another access point to find out the kind of stuff I'm thinking about and stuff I'm working through. I contribute elsewhere sometimes as well. Like, I podcast pretty often on Baseball Prospectus. I've written and will be writing more things for GQ, sports and non-sports stuff. And so yeah, I'm around.
Jessica: Awesome. Everywhere is the answer. You can find Bradford everywhere that you look.
Bradford: [laughs] Everywhere.
Jessica: Thank you so much for coming on. Burn It All Down. This has been great.
Bradford: Thank you for having me.
Jessica: That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Listen, subscribe, and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. And as always, thank you to our patrons. Your support means the world. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. To all our flamethrowers, burn on and not out.