Free Friday: Jontay Porter and a Whole Lotta Baseball

Thanks to all who came out to my WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL event here at Coachella, er, Rancho Mirage, Calif., on Thursday. It was, and I say this with love, sort of the opposite of Coachella… a bunch of us older folks talking about baseball. It was like First Base Coachella.

This is the first time I’ve been to the Palm Springs area, and it’s absolutely beautiful and kitschy and awesome, and I love it, and I’m told I better get out of here in the next few days because 120 degrees is coming. It’s no wonder Marilyn is trying to get some air.

Obviously, we took a photo of Marilyn.

The WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL tour has been awesome—29 cities so far—and it’s finally winding down, sort of. I’ll be stopping at a couple bookstores in Chicago next week, then I’ll be at the Gaithersburg Book Festival on May 18 and then—this is the big news—I’ll be in London doing some events and stuff around the London Series, June 8-9. This is because they’re publishing the book in the UK!

If you’re a baseball fan living within proximity of London, reach out; maybe we can find some time to set up a little JoeBlogs thing while I’m over there.

And then… sure, the publishing house is already beginning to set up the fall tour for WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL! They apparently have received TRIPLE the early appearance requests that we received for WWLB, which is obviously thrilling and humbling and a little bit daunting. I’ll be able to give you some idea about all that in the next few weeks.

The advanced reader copies—for reviewers and early readers—should be coming out soon. We’ll plan to have a contest to give a few of those away if you want an early look. I’m really excited for people to see it; I worked really hard so that the book would have a certain feel, different from baseball, and I think and hope I got there. As always, remember you can preorder the book from the good folks at Quail Ridge and I’ll sign the book and inscribe it any way you like, with the exception of saying something nice about John Elway.

I’m kind of shocked that the whole Jontay Porter story hasn’t blown up much, much bigger. It seems to me that if the same story happened in baseball, it would be leading newscasts and podcasts and Chromecasts and leg casts and all other kinds of casts for months and months.

Porter, as you probably know, has been banned for life by the NBA for various gambling transgressions, including betting against his own team and giving some inside information about his own health to a bettor. The NBA also seems to think he feigned an illness to support that bettor’s wager.

Now, Jontay Porter was a bench player… and a limited one at that. He played 11 games in the 2020-21 season for Memphis, kicked around for a couple years and came back to play 26 games for Toronto this year. He was very much on the fringe. So this should explain why this story has not gotten anywhere near the national and international attention of, say, the Shohei Ohtani saga or, going back, Pete Rose.

Except, unlike the Shohei Ohtani saga, this story has blazing fire instead of smoke. Between this and the Tim Donaghy fiasco—he’s the referee who the FBI investigated and who eventually pled guilty when it was found he bet on games he officiated—the NBA has now had two staggering point-shaving scandals that, quite honestly, are both starker and more basic than the Pete Rose thing. In both cases, we have very direct and convincing evidence that the integrity of the game was not just threatened but clearly violated.

These could be isolated incidents. It’s possible. Anything is possible. They also could be signs of a massive gambling problem within the NBA. And while I tend to be a benefit-of-the-doubt person, I have to say that I kind of lean toward the massive problem side.

Here’s why: The NBA regular season is mostly pointless. Twenty of the 30 teams make the playoffs in one form or another, this includes a couple teams with losing records. The 10 that do not are, frankly, terrible, with an average 25-57 record. We basically knew who these 10 teams were back in December.

Add in a point spread—you CAN bet on a baseball point spread, but it’s not the typical way to bet—and you have more or less invented the perfect sport for gamblers and players and referees and coaches to manipulate.

For that reason, the NBA, in my mind, has to be THE MOST vigilant of all the leagues to ensure fair play and wall off the influence of gambling and gamblers. In fact, they have been the opposite. It was the NBA that jumped into the gambling game first and with both feet. They led the way.

Is Porter a fluke or the tip of a much larger iceberg? (Zou Zheng/Xinhua via Getty Images)

All the way back in 2014, the NBA cut a deal with FanDuel, and commissioner Adam Silver wrote a New York Times editorial calling for the legalization of betting while singing the praises of the gambling laws in England, where, he wrote (a bit too enthusiastically, for my tastes), “a sports bet can be placed on a smartphone, at a stadium kiosk or even using a television remote control.” All that was missing was the exclamation point at the end.

Silver’s dream has come to America over the last 10 years: Gambling is now legal and everywhere, and you can bet on your smartphone anytime you like, and NBA broadcasts are rife with gambling cues and opportunities. Heck, gambling interests might be the biggest sponsor of America’s games and the media that cover those games.*

*I found it both funny and not funny when in this fine Ringer story about Porter and the NBA, this parenthetical had to be added: “Speaking of: This story is brought to you by The Ringer, a FanDuel partner.”

Silver wrote—and I assume he still believes this—that legalizing gambling would allow it to be regulated, shining light and taking gambling out of the shadowy netherworld of illegal bookies. And so maybe he believes that the Porter saga is actually a good sign that the new regulations work—Porter was flagged and caught quickly and then banned for life. Problem solved.

I’m deeply skeptical that the problem ends with an unexceptional NBA player and a single referee. Over the years, I have heard baseball insiders complain again and again through the years that baseball is held to a different standard than football or basketball. This was the big complaint during the steroid scandal, during the sign-stealing scandal, etc. A lot of that has felt like sour grapes, but in this case, I do think there’s something to this. If anything like the Porter thing happened in baseball, it would get wall-to-wall coverage.

And Porter? There is literally no mention of him on ESPN’s homepage today. None. This gambling thing in the NBA should be an existential problem. The league should have to explain how it can be so integrally tied to gambling interests AND expect people to believe in the integrity of the sport.

If they have a good answer to that question, I haven’t heard it yet.

Happy Friday! Our Friday posts are free so everyone can enjoy them. Just a reminder that Joe Blogs is a reader-supported newsletter, and I’d love and appreciate your support.

Checking in on Tungsten Arm O’Doyle:

Mike Trout: Hitting .270/.357/.662 with league-leading eight home runs.

Angels record: 9-10.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.

The White Sox shamelessly recorded an attendance of 10,412 for their doubleheader against Kansas City on Wednesday. It might have been a little bit less than that.

The White Sox are becoming a real problem. They’re absolutely terrible, with no real promise of getting better in the foreseeable future. They’re trying to move to a new stadium in Chicago’s South Loop, but will likely run into a million issues with that, and rumors about them moving to Nashville will undoubtedly keep on surfacing (even if only to put more pressure on the city to build that new stadium). They lost announcer Jason Benetti. And the fans have already given up. I’m not exactly sure how things turn around there.

Mookie Betts is hitting .369. Shohei Ohtani is hitting .360. Will Smith is hitting .348.

And yet, somehow, the Los Angeles Dodgers are hitting only .265 as a team.

How is that possible? Well, it doesn’t help that Chris Taylor is hitting .029. Yeah, that’s right, .029—that might be the lowest batting average I’ve ever seen more than a couple of days into a season. Obviously, it’s still small sample size, but Taylor is 1 for 35. He’s striking out in more than half of his official at-bats.

Here are your lowest batting averages for players with at least 25 plate appearances:

1. Chris Taylor, .029

2. Jackson Holliday, .040

3. Jace Peterson, .045

4. Martin Maldonado, .061

5. Austin Hayes, .073

For Holliday fans, we’re obligated to point out that Willie Mays began his MLB career 1-for-26. The one hit was a home run off Warren Spahn, who famously said: “We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if only I had struck him out.”

Hey, if you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends!

Have you seen the latest at Colorado revolving around 2023 Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year Deion Sanders? Fourteen of his players entered the transfer portal. Sanders wanted everyone to know that those 14 players were basically not all that important to the team’s success, and he wished them the best.

“We’re good,” he told reporters. “I trust the recruiting team. I trust our coaches, and please have some faith in me.… We’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

When told that he seemed to be losing some potential starters, Sanders said: “You haven’t been watching practice, huh? Amen.” Sanders’ practices are, of course, closed to the media.

Sure, we’re back in the small-sample-size department, but can we talk about the wonder that is Salvador Perez? When Perez was in the minor leagues, the Royals just loved him because of his attitude and defensive chops. Other teams’ scouts, though, were deeply skeptical, because they just thought he wouldn’t hit; his sluggish bat speed left them wanting.

Well, Perez has had a 13-year MLB career, he’s made eight All-Star games, won five catcher Gold Gloves, set the Royals’ single-season home run record, led the team to two pennants and a World Series championship. And he’s smiled all the way. He’s utterly wonderful in every way imaginable.

He’s now 34 years old. He has taken a beating behind the plate. He missed the whole 2019 season with an elbow injury. He’s had his much-celebrated defense questioned because of subpar pitch-framing numbers. Salvy has been written off countless times.

But he’s still here, catching three or four times a week, playing some first base, serving as DH, and lookie here: He’s hitting .324/.370/.574 with a team-leading five home runs and 17 RBIs in 18 games. I don’t know how much longer he can keep on keeping on, but, man, I hope it’s a long time still, because I just keep hoping that this guy ends his career in Cooperstown.

Paul Skenes’ numbers in Class AAA Indianapolis: Four starts, 12⅔ innings pitched, 5 hits, 0 runs, 27 strikeouts.

Pittsburgh is off to an 11-8 start in what I believe is a very winnable division.

I’d get pretty excited, Pirates fans. If they can just have some momentum going when they call up Skenes, well, that sort of feels like how miracle seasons happen.

Hey, everybody, let’s not sleep on the New York Mets. They got off to the 0-5 start that cynical Mets fans were probably expecting, but since then have been playing some really good baseball, including a destructive three-game sweep of the aforementioned Pirates. I don’t know how sustainable it is for the Mets to lead the league in ERA—the early-season dominance of José Buttó and Luis Severino might not last forever—but I also think the Mets are going to hit better than they have in the early going. Francisco Lindor is not going to hit .151/.259/.219 all season long.

I’m just saying the Mets COULD be better than anticipated.

JoeBlogs Week in Review

Monday: Could Scottie Scheffler Be That Guy?

Tuesday: Farewell, John Sterling.

Wednesday: RIP, Whitey Herzog.

Thursday: What is a Generational Player?