Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1000: The Old and the New

Episode Date: December 31, 2016

In Sam’s last show as co-host, he and Ben talk to Astros pro scouting director Kevin Goldstein. Then, Ben talks to incoming co-host Jeff Sullivan before Jeff leaves on a fantastically timed vacation.

Somehow I know, we'll meet again Not sure quite where and I don't know just when You're in my heart, so until then Wanna smile, wanna cry, saying goodbye joined for the last time as co-host, at least, by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello. Hello. So for the longest time, we've known what we were going to do for 1000, at least in the broad strokes,

and usually we don't know what we're going to do in the next episode. But we've known years in advance that this is what we would do for the big round number. And I guess the origins of this were, don't know almost 800 episodes ago the last time we had kevin goldstein the pro scouting director for the houston astros and wasn't it 900 i thought i thought we had him in episode 100 and that was it now we had him in 100 and then i think we said we'd leave him alone for a while and we didn't really we had him back on like 220 something and then we said we'd leave him alone for a while and i think we said leave him alone until 500 and as it turned out we left him alone for 500 more episodes after

that but he is here again hi kevin you know if this was the plan all along i just had you two are horrible planners yeah we really pulled out all the stops i know yeah you you had like uh when you did a milestone episode of up and in maybe it was 50 i don't know but you you did a whole big blowout and you had scott boris on and you had big plans and we we just are talking to you yeah i feel like to some degree the payoff of this show has always been the callback. It's never about going bigger. It's just about referring back to something that you remember from an earlier episode and feeling like, oh, yeah, I remember that episode because I was listening then. So to me, a callback to episode 100 or whatever

is like the hundredth best thing we could have possibly done with this episode. We should have added, I mean, we should have added Rallis Chapman on to talk about why we never talk about the Reds or whatever. I can't even remember. Our topic from episode one, right? Like what was it?

Whether he should be a starter or reliever? Were we still talking about that then? We were, yeah. That was a while ago. Sover? Were we still talking about that then? We were, yeah. That was it. It was a while ago. So, yeah, when we started this podcast, you were still doing yours, I think, Kevin, right? Yeah. It was around the same time.

So you've actually accomplished things since then, and we're still doing this podcast. It's debatable, but sure. Well, we both have had more job changes than him so i think we've accomplished more that's hopefully true or maybe he's accomplished more by keeping the same job the whole time i don't know but is your uh is your job more fun now than it was when you first started it because like your your whole thing as a internet prospect person was dreaming about the future and projecting what guys were going to do. And you can have really fun dreams about guys and they can be anything until they actually show up and they

turn into what they are. And so the Astros are now a good baseball team. Some would say maybe one of the best baseball teams right now. And I imagine that on a day-to-day basis, it's certainly more fun to win than to lose, but maybe there's less dreaming? Or do you just have different dreams now than you did when the team was bad, but you could look ahead a few years and say, well, we're going to be good then? Was that more fun or less fun than the actual being good? You know, winning is a lot more fun. So, you know, 2015 was our you know, our most fun year, or at least my most fun year as an Astro. You know, last year I had some frustrations.

You know, we thought we had a playoff team and then got off to a bad April and then had some injury issues and then fell a little bit short. That's probably the most frustrating season. That's more frustrating than, like, you know, you're still rebuilding, you're not expecting much from the big league team, and and you know they're better but they're not a

playoff team yet and you win 50 60 70 games that that's a lot easier to deal with than than expecting to win and not but we've had a fun off season but yeah to answer your question yeah i'm absolutely having as much fun as i've ever had i have a great job i have a lot of fun i i watch a lot of baseball. My opinion about baseball is asked for, and I get to kind of work. I work with an incredible group that makes me smarter about baseball every day. So yeah, I'm having a blast. So most of us don't really work in a kind of a team sport environment. Most of us, a lot of us work for a company that, you know, maybe we hope they do well, but we don't judge our own performance by the company's bottom line necessarily. Whereas in a team sport,

the goal is obviously to win and you get to wear the polo shirt and everything like that. So do you sort of judge how well you're doing? Do you feel good about yourself and the way that you're doing your job entirely based on how the organization is doing and whether it's winning? Or do you have some other kind of ways of feeling good about yourself, regardless of what happens in Milwaukee on some June night? Sure. Yeah, no, I mean, you certainly can. I mean, you do have to kind of remain rational about the game on a day-to-day basis.

And I've never done the math in my, but like in my head, I can tell you, and I often say to myself, like, you know, you have a rough loss, and then you go to Milwaukee and you lose a game 4-3 in extra innings or something, and those are tough. You do need to kind of hit the pillow and say, that was less than 1% of our season, or you'll go insane. But you have no other option. You need to be able to do that and kind of judge seasons

or judge how good you do in much larger chunks, if you will. But is it still, is it still, is it even are those larger chunks, those still the team's results or do you have ways of judging yourself individually? Um, I guess I'm often self-critical. I think ultimately, like, you know, what we do is judged in the standings. I mean, that's ultimately kind of how things work, whether we like it or not. You know, personally, you know, my job is to, you know, manage a pro scouting department and manage a pro scouting

process and make sure we're delivering to Jeff, my boss, what he needs from this department to allow him to make the best decisions he can. So, you know, there is, you know, I know we can all, and especially, you know, teams with our reputation of being analytic, we can talk a lot about process over results. You know, and so we do have a process, and it's a process I'm proud of, and it's a process that I'm happy with what we get out of it. And I can take some satisfaction from that, but if a team doesn't do well, it's not going to override that satisfaction, if you will. So do they call you KG, Kevin, Goldie, Goldstein, K-Gold? What are you known as in the office? Sarge?

Most frequently KG. There are, because this is baseball, and baseball people in uniform people love to just add an E to something. So there are people in uniform who call me Goldie, and it's just unavoidable. I smile and take it. But front office-wise,

everyone calls me KG. And so the players, like you say, the players all just go with add an E to the first syllable. And I'm curious if that extends to the front office and within the front office. So if it's not too personal, can I ask what you called Jeff? What I personally, what I called him? Yeah. I call him El Jefe.

Uh-huh. Like to his face or like to other? Yeah, sure. So if somebody is like, get this to headquarters and you're like, who should I deliver it to? Wait, no, it happens the other way. I've never had that request made to me. But the other way, the other way. You're requesting, you're telling an intern or whatever.

He's like the pro scouting director slash courier in this scenario. Who would you say to take it to? Or how would you refer to him in a conversation he's not part of with a coworker? I would probably refer to him as Jeff. There's probably a small circle I would refer to him as El Jefe. Okay. Okay. As an intern or something. We don't really have interns. Not that I want to get into that boondoggle, but yeah, like with some entry-level person.

You guys have apprentices now, don't you? Yeah, we do. I don't really know how all that works. I have no such thing in my department. So the way that you watch Major League Baseball must have changed a lot now, right? Because when you were at BP, you didn't really. You didn't pay as close attention to Major League Baseball because you were doing the minor league update every night, and everyone was asking you prospect questions constantly and it was like when a guy graduated to the majors or at least

lost his rookie eligibility it was like he was off your radar he almost like you know you're still aware of him but you don't get asked about him you don't have to write about him you don't have to worry about him anymore but now when a guy graduates that's like the greatest sign that you did something right or that your team did something right. So I guess like paying attention to guys after they make the majors now has gone from like something you don't even do to something that must be one of the most satisfying parts of the job. I mean, obviously I pay a lot more attention all around. And some of that has come with as the Astros have changed. You know, in my early time here with the team, we were still in a rebuilding mode

and we were in a talent accumulation mode. We were trading for prospects. And so there's a lot of my time spent watching minor league baseball and talking to our team of scouts who are watching minor league baseball. As we've gotten better, we have gone into and improved the big league club mode. We're not trading for prospects anymore.

The biggest moves we're making are signing free agents and making trades for big leaguers. That kind of changes the dynamic of not only what I'm doing but what my entire department is doing. We were very much prospect focused before, and we were grabbing Gulf Coast League arms and taking chances on guys. We still do that here and there, but for the most part, our focus in a big way over the last year was looking at big leaguers

and looking at guys who are going to maybe become part of this big league club. We had a huge meeting in November in Houston. We went through about 60 free agents and maybe an equal number of trade targets and kind of talked through all of these players. That was all big league. It was all big league stuff. It was my whole department and much of the front office and Jeff talked about all these guys that we were interested in and what we thought their talent was, how we thought they could help the Astros,

or maybe not help the Astros, and help Jeff make some decisions. So the role has changed a lot from kind of a minor league focus to a major league focus. And that dynamic changes as the team changes. If you trade for a minor league or for a prospect, you guys have the collective reports of your scouts that you can review and look over and say, well, what do we as an organization think of this guy? We have these scouting reports. That's the record. When you trade for a major leaguer and

another team is asking for your minor leaguers, what is the process for evaluating those minor leaguers in that moment or maybe in advance of that moment so that you kind of know what the organizational position is on those guys? Sure. We cover our organization. We assign out our organization on a scouting level the same as we assign out any team. So we cover the Houston Astros minor leaguers the same way we cover the Mariners or the Rangers or the Cardinals organizations. We see them all and add them all up, and have assignments for them. We also just have more information. We have more analytic information on these players because of the technology

we have in our home stadiums. We have more makeup information on these players because we can talk to their coaches and their managers who are with them for five months every day. That's super valuable information. So we are kind of constantly, as a group, kind of ranking and then prepping out our minor leaders. So when those kind of things come up, that we can have strong opinions that are founded on real things.

Obviously, we kind of maintain a universal, like this is the official Astros prospect list, but, you know, Jeff, Jeff knows pretty clearly where everybody stands on guys. And there are players who have some variance in, in how the, the internal front office feels about them. There's players who there's a lot of universality about it. And so it's often a tough thing, but I mean, it's just the most important thing you can do once you're in this position. And when I say I'm in this position, it's a position where you think you have a good team,

and you're more likely going to be trading prospects and acquiring them. One of the most important things you can do is know your own system better than anybody else. It's a huge responsibility of the club. And in these trade talks, would the team that is trading away a player, trading away a prospect, ever be the first one to say his name, or is it always the team that is trading away a player, trading away a prospect, ever be the first one to say his name? Or is it always the team that is acquiring the prospect says who they want and you work from there? Would you guys ever say?

Yeah, it certainly goes both ways. It depends. It's funny. I think really every team we kind of have a different dynamic with. And I think that's the case for every organization where it depends who's coming to who. Teams will come to us and often it's like hey we're just in this player just kind of give us an idea of what it would take and you're not really getting any you're kind of starting in that vague way and other times you have conversations or you initiate conversations that are much more directive you know we would like this and we would give that

you know with exact specifics and that becomes a starting point um so kind of it really depends on on the situation depends on the players it depends on the trade depends on how you know that organization operates so you know we can start the starting points i guess what i'm saying starting points can be like very very specific uh with exact packages or starting points can be just very very vague uh you know we have that interest in one of these players and let us know what you think and you just kind of go from there. How often do you think that information imbalance or advantage really makes a difference?

Are there a lot of times when a team will ask for an Astros prospect and you'll think, oh, they don't know this thing that we know about this prospect? They don't know his character. Whether it's like maybe they're overrating him you think maybe you're happy that they are asking for him because you know that you know his coaches gave a bad report about something he did on the road one time or you know whatever some some technology you have that the other team might not have might say that he's not actually as good as the stats that he was that, that sort of thing. Like, is there a significant difference

in many cases? I mean, I'd hesitate to say significant. Obviously there are always going to be gaps. Um, and those gaps can go both directions. And sometimes those caps make you think, you know, you think about where you're at and all of a sudden one summer, a bunch of teams are asking about this one player that you guys have you know internally you may maybe haven't had that high rating and you start saying yourself boy all these other teams like and what are we missing like what do they see we don't and so it can kind of go both ways and you got to make sure it doesn't play with your head too much but you know it's it's funny i mean you know i'm an old man i can remember like the bill james baseball abstracts a whole lot of you know, I'm an old man. I can remember, like, the Bill James baseball abstracts, and a whole lot of, you know, making fun of GMs and, you know,

taking shots that I can't believe these guys operate like this. And, you know, even in the early days of baseball perspectives, there were still teams that you'd have to sit back and go, man, I know what they're doing here. I don't think that's the case anymore. Like, I think every team's smart now, and I don't think there's, like, someone to take advantage of anymore. I think every team's coming at it.

Like, you know, it might be a different process than yours, but it's certainly a really smart process. I think it's tough to think you're getting away with something. I know we never – I don't think we've ever really kind of, you know, do that deal and thought we were getting away with something. I think everything's come with some risk and then had some payoff to it. But, yeah, at no point do you go, boy, we really got him here on this one. I just don't think

it really happens anymore. There are thousands of transactions across Major League Baseball, and a few of them are undeniably dogs. And you can, you know, if a trade happens that is one of those dogs, you can get GMs anonymously saying, holy cow, that's the worst trade I've ever seen or whatever the case may be.

When you guys see a trade like that happen, is it like just this huge regret that you weren't the one who was on that phone call at that moment? Not really because you kind of have to, you know, so many trades are kind of of the moment and of the, you know, in and of themselves. You can't just act like, you know, if we inserted them, boy, we could have gotten that guy for just this much. And, you know, that's probably not the case, actually. Because, you know, what you see as a dog is probably just, you know, one team either valuing or overvaluing or undervaluing a player in that deal a lot more than the industry norm, right? And that's why you see it generally as a dog. I mean, there are players who, for one reason or another, we see.

You know, if you could go, I have five press lists for every team. Like, there are players in there who I have much higher, and there are players that I have in there much lower than the industry norm and a lot of third-party prospect lists. And then, you know, and the same applies for big leaguers. There are big leaguers who I probably have much higher and would value much more or value much less than the industry as a whole values. And those might play in my recommendations to Jeff.

And sometimes Jeff might act on those and it's going to look like it's going to look weird. But I think every team does that. And I think it's about kind of having faith in your system and faith in your process and faith in the way, you know, you as a group. And then, you know, for the most part, what we do is as a group. But, you know, Jeff's never going, what would you do? I'm doing this because Kevin thinks so.

He's doing it because he's actually, you know, taken into account what a whole lot of people think. But the point is, like, no one has the kind of, you kind of make every decision based on these average industry values. I think you're going to make average industry moves. You're not going to really hit any kind of home runs, if you will, and you're going to put an average team. And so you do need to take some chances, but you also need to kind of not worry about what the whole world thinks. You know, we've made moves that have gotten roundly criticized. We've made moves that have been, you know, roundly praised. And sometimes the ones that were roundly praised were not good

moves in the end. And some of the ones that were roundly criticized were. So yeah, I don't think we worry too much about that kind of thing. Ben might have more specific questions. And that's all fun. But Ben, can I, I sort of want to ask just like, kind of a couple of like big kind of Kevin questions, if I can. Okay, sure. All right. So you said that you enjoy it, that you're having a good time. If I were at a party with you and I was talking to you though, what I would ask it, I like, I'm genuinely curious, is this, has it been a dream come true? Like, is it really an amazing, amazing thing? Or is it just like, okay. So it's like a dream come true. Like, like this is like the most, it's still the most amazing thing that ever happened to you

and you wouldn't trade it for the world. And if BP came back and offered you twice the money, you wouldn't go back to them. Like you just can't be anywhere happier than you are now. Is that really? Wow. Yeah. That is so cool.

I'm not saying that to be facetious. I've given the speech like to my scouting group and I hope they all feel this way. I know they've heard it multiple times, but I'll give you a good example. If I'm in Houston for work and we're playing, we have home games in Houston, right? BP starts around 4.30 or so, and around 4.30 I'll go, well, I'm going to go on the field and watch batting practice just because I can. And I will leave our offices, which are in the stadium,

kind of go around to the left field corner, walk down some steps, walk onto the field, and then I'm on the field and guys are hitting. And if you walk onto a major league baseball field, well, the team you're working for is hitting and the crowd's coming and the music's on and you don't get a charge out of that, like, go home. And so, yeah, absolutely. This has been a great experience it's exceeded

expectations yeah it's been fantastic the astros have been great to me they've been great to my family i've had a tremendous number of experiences i've traveled around the world watching baseball i i feel like i've helped you know helped make a difference uh for this team and it's been really really rewarding in that way yeah i have no complaints man I'm sorry to let you down no no that I'm glad yeah I would yeah I mean at that party I would look you in the eye and go yeah when you have when you tweeted the picture of the champagne I was imagining that it would be the greatest experience and like I was super charged and happy and excited and I thought you know like there couldn't be a cooler thing for anybody or for Kevin than this. And I'm so glad that four years later it holds up. Like I have a low opinion of our collective ability to maintain happiness or retain happiness. I'm very glad that this held up. I'm still a miserable jerk, but no, this is what the job's been great.

So do you at all ever socialize with players not really no you know you will say hello to them and they'll say hello to you like socialize not in a big way and they look you know obviously you know you see them at the hotel you see them on the field you know i'm not in coaching i'm not a manager. I'm not uniformed as the industry term. I don't spend a ton of time with these guys. None of us spend more than an hour with any player at any one time. Socialize, no.

Certainly be friendly with, yeah. You get to know these guys a little bit. You care. For various reasons, and just from running into and spending some time with him since I joined this organization, the first time I saw him was an instruct like to be honest with you like one of my highlights of the 2016 season was you know T. Oscar Hernandez's home run in his first game like that was like a moment that really touched me because I remember seeing this kid

you know in my first instructs I had this job for a month he just played in the Gulf Coast League and you know me and another scout were just like hey who's the kid with the pad speed? You know, getting to know him, he's such a good kid. And when he came up into the home run, that was like a touching, really great moment because I was able, because I did have a bit of a personal relationship with the guy. But like close personal, like hang out? No, not really. When you are at a, you know, cocktail party or Christmas party or whatever, and someone finds out what you do, what's the first question that most people ask you about your job? Well, I mean, I you do, what's the first question that most people ask you about your job? Well, I mean, I live in Illinois, so the first question is always, well, how about those

cups? So that's what I deal with. I tend to, it's going to sound bad, I tend to try to avoid it. I tend to, as I say, I work in baseball, and if they ask, they ask you, and I was like, yeah, that's great. Because I don't necessarily want to get Darren Pepl about baseball the whole time. And so I tend not to, I guess would be my answer. And is Kanye spinning at your New Year's Eve party?

He's never answered my tweet. And I guess he's not going to at this point. It's a downward spiral, personally at least, that seems to happen. That doesn't require any longer of an answer than that. One thing I've noticed about baseball people in general, and not like front offices, but also like agencies, really anybody who's around the game in a non-playing capacity, I've noticed how everybody, there seems to be a priority put on being in shape. It seems like everybody's in good shape.

Have you noticed that? Here you are talking to me. Well, I was wondering if you are in better shape now than you were four years ago because you're around all these workout dudes. I am the same size as I am, so I wear the same size pants. I weigh the same size as I am, so I wear the same size pants. I weigh the same. I will tell you this, which is like a year or so, maybe two years into the job now, I quit smoking. Congratulations. That's good. So that's it, but that's it.

Like, I'm still fat. So I still eat like a pig. So, yeah, but you're right. Like, it's like, but you're right. Like, most of our front office, not everyone, but most of them are like kind of workout freaks and health freaks. And they're talking about how many carbs they're intaking and things like that. You know, and I don't. That's not how I roll. But I did quit smoking. It's funny, like a scout was going to try the uh go the e-cigarette route in an attempt

to quit dipping and i said oh i think that's a good idea maybe i'll try the e-cigarette route and attempt to quit smoking and i did and i was on the e-cigarettes kind of just as a i don't know it comes up with my nicotine patch slash oral fixation patch for like six months and then i put them away actually ran out of like the filters when i was traveling abroad and never bought new ones and that was. So I'm actually like coming up on the anniversary because I remember I quit on January 2nd, but I don't know if it's three years or two or four. Good work. Yeah. Is there any pressure since you're, I mean, I know that you're in Houston often, you're on the road constantly, but you're still based in DeKalb. Is there any,

based in DeKalb. Is there any, like, I don't know, pressure to not be working remotely? Not really. Like, it's funny. If you look at it, like, at most, not a lot, I don't know if it's most or not. It's close to if it's not.

Like, most postcontractors like to live remotely. They live where they live, and that's just kind of how it works. Like, honestly, like, having me, having my closest airport be O'Hare makes my life incredibly easier. And, you know, honestly, like makes the Astros life a lot cheaper. Because it's, if you're sucked into, everyone, once you work in baseball, you're going to get sucked into somebody's ecosystem as far as flights and hotels. So I'm united in almost everything. Scott's a Marriott guy. But if you get sucked into the United ecosystem and you fly to O'Hare,

I only have to connect if I'm flying to Corpus Christi to see our AA team or to the Dominican. Everything else is a straight shot. So that saves a lot of time. Because it's O'Hare, it's a hub, the flights are super cheaper, and it saves the club money. Everyone's life is a, the flights are super cheaper, and to club money, everyone's life is a lot easier because I live here in some way. So, yeah, it's not really. You know, I'm on call.

No one has, you know, Jeff can call me 24-7. He learned not to call me early in the morning, which is not something I can say about our manager. And so it works out just fine. Like, you know, I'm in Houston often, and, crunch times, when necessary, be it the trade deadline or the winter meetings, I'm there in the world like the ringer has sort of a small office in Brooklyn that some people who live in Brooklyn go into but it would be kind of crazy for me to do that all the time and commute an hour and a half just to sit in a different room and write and I I write better kind of on my own in a in a little bubble of silence anyway but I still sort of vaguely feel guilty all the time that i'm not like they're being part of the team

physically i guess even though it makes perfect sense for me not to be sure and obviously you know in baseball um you know during the season half the time our team's on the road uh often jeff travels with the team when we're on the road uh if not sometimes other people do so they're not around either the scouting people people, the scouting directors, if you will. So myself, Mike Elias, who runs amateur, and also Kim who runs international, are all just running around. And if I'm at home, I think I go to the office on the days where I am at home, I think I'd kind of be annoying just because I spend most of that time on the phone pacing the house, talking to our scouts and very

young people that we have about baseball. So none of my staff is in Houston either, which is one of the more challenging aspects of running an apartment like this. So me being in Houston doesn't really change what I do that much in the sense that my whole staff isn't in Houston either. Can I ask you a Nori Aoki question? Sure. Because I don't know at what point I somehow got associated with Nori Aoki as if he's like a pet player of mine.

I think it was when the Royals traded for him, and I wrote about him. And as I was writing about him, I developed an appreciation for him because he's a good player. He's kind of good in sort of subtle ways and he reached on error all the time and he gets a ton of infield hits and you add it all up and he's a pretty good player. And so it sort of perplexed me because he's on a different team every year. He never gets a big contract. that he should get like some enormous Windfall but like he's basically An average major league baseball Player as far as I can tell if you just You know divide his

War by his plate appearances or however you want To figure that out he comes out as An average player and he's been doing that For a while now and yet He always seems to be available The Astros claimed him off waivers I mean am I missing something? It's not that you're going to like tell me, no, he's not actually as good as you think.

He's your player now. But like, what am I missing here? Why does Aoki not get like a multi-year deal? Like what is it that contributes to his availability, I guess? I mean, I don't think you're wrong. Obviously, I like Aoki. We like Aoki quite a bit. We're, we're really happy to get him. He was a really good fit for us. And yet, by the way, let me just jump in and say, and yet you let a series of teams get him for tiny one-year deals

before this. Things happen at certain, things happen at times. You know, everything is about opportunity and then fit. And those are, those then fit. Those are really important things. There are really good second basemen out there who we're not going to go try to acquire because we have Jose Altuve. You're not going to get better than that. I think timing is an important thing. When Aoki came available, one of our biggest needs was some outfield help. And then one of our biggest needs was some help from the left side of the plate. Cause you know, as you guys know, we had an kind of a extensively right-handed heavy lineup and we also needed someone who kind of made contact and got on base. And then he does that very, very well. And so he was just kind of this,

this perfect fit for us. And we were thrilled to get him. Do you think lineup balance is a, is a big deal i never know what to make of that when people say oh they're too righty heavy or too lefty heavy like i assume it's better to be balanced all else being equal but i also assume that it's better to be good and you know skewed to one side than it is to be balanced but not have as good hitters so i don't know not that you you're going to give away. Yeah, you're not wrong. You know, you'd still, you know, if you need a lefty,

you're still going to take the star righty over the average lefty because the star is the star. But when you're, you know, evaluating players on a one-to-one basis as they become available, which is how you kind of have to operate sometimes, you know, the fact that he's left-handed or right-handed, depending on what your need is, is certainly going to play some sort of factor here. And it does kind of help you with how you build a lineup

and how you create possible matchup issues with the opposing manager. Those things really do matter. And so we did, I think in our mind, we did need to add some left-handedness to the lineup. We did that. Players like Raddick and McCann still would have been, and then Beltran, who's obviously switched, still would have been awfully attractive to us if they were right-hand guys.

But if they were left-handed, maybe add it a little bit. I have a couple more baseball questions. We were just bombarding you with trade questions. So since you've been involved in free agent signings and free agent attempted signings that didn't happen, how big a deal are non-financial factors now that you've kind of been involved in negotiations at some level? Does it almost always come down to we're offering more dollars or fewer dollars than this other team? Or have you found that it really does matter kind of, I don't know,

whether the school system is good or just how you pitch the player when you're first reaching out to them or all those other factors? It depends on the player. It can be a factor. I mean, it is still very much so. It's not 100%, but it's still very much still show me the money, as it should be. That's fine.

I don't negotiate with free agents. I do minor league deals. That's my gig. So I've had minor league free agents. I do minor league deals. That's my gig. So I sign minor league free agents. But, like, major league free agents, like these huge deals, the ones on MLB Trade Rumors, that's all Jeff and then Brent Taubman, our director of baseball operations, doing those negotiations. I'm just kind of chiming in when asked, like,

would you give this guy this much or would you give this guy that much? But, you know, the money is usually what's overriding. But there are factors. there is a comfort level there is you know a lot more players want to play for us since we're good than then they did when we were bad um that's not perfectly natural i think a lot of players kind of see when they play us or even just on the highlights they see the kind of the energy and the vibe we have, and that's very attractive to them, and I think that helps us. This is a money factor but not a direct one, but there's no state income tax in Texas.

And when you start putting that multiplier into baseball salaries, it can be significant. So, yeah, there are little things. There are comfort levels. There are places guys want to go play, they want to play on the West Coast. Often partner their girlfriend or their wife doesn't want to play somewhere and that'll play a role but over i mean money is still that you're leading overwhelmingly leading factor but it's not everything since you just mentioned signing minor league free agents

every year sam and i have done a minor league free agent draft, and it's like our favorite event of the year. And we just compete to draft like 10 minor league free agents each. And the person whose draftees get the most accumulated plate appearances or total batters faced in the major leagues the next year wins. So we're just looking for guys who get a shot to play. It doesn't even matter if they do well, and usually they don't. But our process is, I don't know, we're like Googling these guys and we're looking at stats and we're trying to find research or we're just trying to find gets in the big leagues every year and you know plays a few games here and there so what is the process when you are actually making decisions that matter about these guys sure uh you know we as an organization in general we don't find a lot of minor league free agents it's uh it's a situation where at the end of the when this is all over you'll see sometimes teams sign 10 15 we'll usually sign like two to four. And part of that, I think, is a tribute to us having enough players and us wanting to see what those players can do and wanting to learn about these players that we've drafted and developed or traded for.

There is a philosophical piece to that where we let our own guys play and then we believe in the guys we acquire. So when we time our free agents it's more of a it's more of a need thing so you know with nolan fontana getting claimed by the angels we needed a shortstop at triple a we didn't have one you know we needed we wanted to get a you know a catcher with big league experience and so there's kind of more than you're not just kind of sorting through these guys and kind of figure out who's the best player sometimes, which is just saying, I need to fill this exact role.

And so that's kind of like what happened with Brignac. And we were thrilled to get Reid and Reid grew up an Astros fan, and that helped us, I think, in that sense of getting Reid to sign with us. But, you know, we wanted some more lefty depth. You'll find lefties. But we can't just kind of line up from my league free agent scale. I mean, I really like that player because then you've got to go, where does he play?

Yeah, I was just going to ask you that. Like, how often is space a consideration? Because every now and then we'll talk about, yeah, because we'll talk about, like, you know, well, where could teams spend money that they are not currently spending money or now that the CBA sort of limits teams in a lot of ways how could they differentiate themselves and people will say well why don't you just get two more minor league affiliates or something or you know like so what is the what are the reasons

why teams don't do that um every team has one minor league affiliate or one at each level yes so you get down to you know, some of the short season stuff. We have two DSL teams, a number of teams have two DSL teams and then that seems to be growing actually. But, you know,

if we sorted out every minor league free agent and my favorite minor league free agent, yeah, and our collective favorite minor league free agent, all the scouting support,

all the analytics support, all the technology support, everything, everyone liked this guy and he was a corner infielder who belonged to AAA. We would not sign him because we've got nowhere to put him. How are we going to get him at-bats? If we give him at-bats, we're taking away from players that we care about.

And so space is a huge consideration. There is an organic document of our depth chart, and even now where we kind of think everyone's kind of going to begin the year. And some things can change with transactions. Some things can change with how players do this spring. But this is kind of how we're probably going to, for the most part,

I'm sure it's 90% plus accurate, how we're going to break camp. You know, with this guy in Quad Cities and this guy at Corpus and this guy at Fresno. And so, you know, we find myley free agents not based on who we like. We define the holes

before we choose a player. And last question from me. Someone in the Facebook group was wondering how much credit a scout gets for finding a great player or how much credit does a scout deserve

for finding a great player? And I'm always curious about how you evaluate scouts, which I assume is a big part of your job, being able to tell if your people are doing a good job. And it's hard because it takes a while to find out if opinions are right or wrong or whether they were right for the right reasons or wrong for the wrong reasons. So how do you go about that? It's a huge challenge. You're right.

And it's one of the bigger challenges that the industry has is kind of grading and judging scouts. And there's kind of just an overall thoughtfulness to it that that matters as well. You know, we do give credit to scouts for finding players, but we do also see everything as kind of a team effort. You know, we even at the level, have, you know, we've scouted reports, we've technology, we've everything. The best decisions we've made have been when everybody likes a player. And, you know, the one issue I have with kind of, you know, the credit for finding a player is, you know, some of the best things,

or, yeah, I don't, some of the best things that we have as scouts, and some of the most valuable things some of our scouts have ever done, is tell us not to acquire a player, and to tell us to stay away from that player, and to tell us they wouldn't sign that player, or they wouldn't trade for that player. How do you put that in the ledger? That's a different thing. Sometimes scouts can have as much value telling you, keeping you from making a mistake as they can from doing something right.

You know what I'm saying? So I think that plays a huge role in it as well. So it's not, you know, everybody keeps score. That's just part of the industry. But, you know, what counts in the end, I think is something that is really highly variable beyond just, hey, we acquired this player and that scout first identified them. Right.

My last question is what you guys do. You guys are, you know, you're a group, you work together, you are in offices, you're on planes, and then you put out this product that is then judged by the world and everybody takes their own view of it and their own sort of sense of ownership of it. And I just wonder what it has been like for you to be doing work that is publicly consumed, publicly evaluated specifically. What has it been like for you to have people writing about your team and about your boss and maybe about you and maybe about your product and the players that you helped acquire? and particularly when the writing is sometimes

critical of any or all of those things. Is that a emotionally difficult thing for you at all? No. Cool. No. It comes with the territory. Do you take it personally? Would you take it personally if, like, if I wrote something about you that was critical, not you, but the Astros that was critical, would you like me less? No. If it was factually wrong, I might get upset. But if it was just critical, no, that's fine. I mean, let's see your opinions. We're not perfect. We've made some mistakes.

I would like you less if you did it to me. I mean, I think we've always known what you, you know, you're always- I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of that, by the way. I mean, it might sound like I'm proud of it because I'm broadcasting it. It comes with the territory. And I think there's something like you can either, it's like anything. It's not like we talked about with like, you know, getting worked up about the results of a single game. You can either let that drive you insane or you cannot.

And it's actually, it is your choice. So choose not to. I do think, you know, I guarantee you if you were critical in a way and it was something that is your choice so choose not to i i do think you know i guarantee you if you were critical in a way and it was something that i disagreed with you on i can guarantee you that there's some or maybe even multiple factors and the reasons i disagree with you on that are things that you don't know and so you know rationally i can't get mad at you because you've made your decision and you've made your opinion has been founded on less information than I have. I would think that would be so frustrating.

I'm not saying that's some sort of braggadoit. Just like that's just how it is. I work for the team. You don't. I would think it would be so frustrating, though, that so many people are writing about your job when you know that they don't have access to all the things that they need to know. No, I think it's the easiest thing to do. You think, well, you know, you don't have access to all the things that they need to know. No, I think it's the easiest thing to do. You think, well, you know, you don't know. Walk away, right?

They don't know. Okay, I'm going to go eat again. Are there times when you think the knowing can mislead you? Like, you know, maybe not knowing anything can be better in certain situations than knowing everything? I think absolutely. I think absolutely. I think it's just you have more information. There's more kind of the potential for weighting errors, if you will, is greater.

So sure, absolutely. All right. Well, I should have kept track of how many times you said process during this podcast. It was a lot of times. Have you picked up any other, I don't know, new age analytics talk from the Nerd Cave people? No, not really. I think it's, I think we embraced the Nerd Cave.

No, not really. I'm going to let you down on this one. What a bummer way to end this thing. Well, I'm not that interested in what you're drinking, but what are you playing? What am I playing? Well, I just,

I got Watch Dogs 2 for Christmas. Yeah. And so I played that. Partially on my recommendation? Maybe? Yeah, a little bit, for sure. I was about five hours into that. What else?

I played the first chapter of Hitman. Cool. And then on the portable super dork level, because I do a lot of portable gaming because of my job, which is where I kind of do my RPGs. Yes. I just finished SMT4 Apocalypse on the 3DS. Okay. Yeah, that's on brand.

That's what I was expecting to hear from you. Right. All right. Well, thank you for being our big, huge headliner for episode 1,000. Yeah, like plan better for 2,000. All right. Well, you can find Kevin on Twitter still, at Kevin underscore Goldstein.

You can. We had some fun back in the day. You missed out. Sorry. All right. Well, I guess that's that. Sam, it's been an honor and a pleasure. Oh, yeah.

That's it. That's it? Yeah, I guess that's that. Sam, it's been an honor and a pleasure. Oh, yeah. That's it. That's it? Yeah, I guess that's it. All right. Well, I'm glad that you and I are ending our tenure on a multiple of five at the end of a week and the end of a year. That part is very satisfying to me. So I'll be back next week and things will be a little bit different. But thanks for all the co-hosting.

Can I just say, I didn't say this when we talked about, when we announced it two episodes ago, but I was thinking about it as I walked around that afternoon. It was just an absolutely incredible honor to replace you at Baseball Perspectives. Like I, as anybody who's heard me talk privately, but probably also publicly knows, I just think that you're the best in the world at what you do. And so to be able to follow in your footsteps was an incredible honor. I think the only thing that could possibly be a greater honor is to be replaced by Jeff Sullivan, who is also the greatest in the world at what he does. That is just unfathomable to me. Like, I mean, in the first instance,

they had no choice. They had to have somebody be the editor-in-chief and I was close. And so they, you know, reached out and grabbed me. But this, you had, you know, you didn't have, like, it feels different and more of an honor. And so I would just leave that there and say that I'm looking forward to listening. And in just a minute, you'll all hear the dulcet cell phone tones of Jeff Sullivan.

All right, so I thought it would be weird if we ended the year without actually ever talking to the new guy. Not that he's new to many of you, but we're going to talk to my new co-host and my friend Jeff Sullivan. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Ben. How are you? I'm okay. Where are you right now? I am in the Los Angeles Airport International Terminal. I am about to kick off for a vacation with my girlfriend. And so I thought that, I guess it was Dave's idea, Dave Cameron's idea,

that the funniest thing to do would be to say, hey, I am joining the podcast and I'm going on vacation. So as a guest host, here is Sam Miller for the next two weeks. I don't know if that would have been amenable. Probably not. No, he was pretty eager to get this behind him once he found out he had to. But this is just like the podcast equivalent of a proof of life photo. We are just establishing that this is not a hoax I didn't just say That you were going to be the new co-host to buy time While you were away for two weeks and unable

To contradict me this is happening And we're both excited about it so we hope That you will make it back from your Trip intact this is an extraordinarily Ill-timed vacation On your part at least from my Perspective from your perspective it's probably A great time to go on vacation.

Not much happening in baseball and vacations are nice. Yeah. That definitely left a certain sense of urgency to the, uh, to the talks about arranging this podcast, but in terms of the rest of baseball, well, there you go.

There's the proof that I'm at the airport. So, uh, you can get out of the background, but yeah, otherwise this is like the one time of year when it's possible to go on a, a vacation and not feel really irresponsible about leaving baseball behind. So kudos slash jeers to this podcast negotiation for taking place at what otherwise would have been

the ideal time to completely get away. Well, look, I'm sure you never would have made travel plans if you'd known that you could spend the first two weeks of January talking to me about baseball instead. But it's too late to return the tickets. So tell everyone the itinerary. Where are you going? What are you doing? Right. It's hard to talk about this stuff and not feel like you're bragging in a way, but in, I swear, the least boastful way possible, we're going to Chile, which did just have a very large earthquake in the southern central area, but thankfully there was not too much damage, certainly none to our itinerary. So we're going to go to the Atacama Desert. That's the important thing. When there was an earthquake, the first thing I thought was,

is Jeff's vacation going to be disrupted by this earthquake? Well, you know, there was that. And then, you know, over Christmas, my grandmother fell down. So we weren't really sure, like, how many things are going to threaten my vacation? But everything is still going great including your grandma yes grandmother is 95 and bulletproof chile appears to be bulletproof and so we're we're still going to uh to the desert and then down to the southern patagonia nightcap for the uh for the second half of the trip so what's the highest thing you're going to be climbing oh god there's a even we're not even necessarily climbing up in the desert, but there are geysers

up in the Atacama Desert. I've never seen a geyser before. I've never seen the Atacama Desert before, but the geysers are at something like 13,000 feet above sea level, and they are certainly not on the top of anything. So this is an intentional week of headaches, probably, that we have planned at some expense. But, you know, the most enjoyable headaches, I think that you can anticipate. Yeah, it's sort of, it's such a tragic story that you are such an outdoorsman. And yet, your job is to produce two baseball posts every day, which prevents you from going outside. So I like that you get to escape now and then and indulge your true interest. That's what the summer weekends are for, except then you come back on a

Sunday evening and you sit down in front of your laptop and you think, okay, my job is to know about what's happening at baseball more than anybody else. What happened at baseball for the last two and a half days? I don't go on vacations, and that's part of the reason why, is that I dread returning from a vacation because once you get back from a vacation, it's the most depressing feeling because you were looking forward to the vacation and then the vacation was fun. And now you know you're not going to get to go on another vacation for a long time.

And so your usual baseline life is much more depressing than it was pre-vacation. And then also you have to catch up on all the stuff you missed while you were gone, which makes it even worse. And the longer you're gone, of course, the more you have to catch up on, which means you sort of follow a vacation with like an anti-vacation where you

just have like three times as much stuff to try to catch up with. And Twitter has made it worse because, I mean, it's unreasonable to go away for two weeks and want to read all tweets that you missed. But just the thought that there's all of that that's taking place, it makes it feel like news happens more, even though I know it doesn't. But it just makes it feel like it's impossible to actually know. I don't know. I'm going to come back on a Thursday. And then for Fangraphs, I have a chat every Friday. So I'm going to log into my chat.

Ordinarily, people are asking me questions about what do I think about baseball. But I think it's going to be a role reversal on January 13th. So what should I do while you're gone other than count down the days till you return? I not only have to find someone to do this podcast with me but I have to find something to talk about with that person or persons at a time when there's nothing to talk about baseball wise. Well I think I saw

that Mike Napoli is close to signing so you might be able to get three podcasts out of that one. Yeah that should get me through the first week. Keon Broxton man. Talk about Keon Broxton. Well you'll make up for it when you get back because That might be the one of the things I'm most Looking forward to other than just the

Pleasure of discourse with you is that You come pre-supplied With topics that was always the The most anxiety Inducing part of the podcast was that Sam and I didn't always Have things to talk about but you are Obligated to

have written about things every day. And usually one of those things is worth talking about at least. So usually, usually one, if worse comes to worse, we can always just crib from what you just wrote for people who don't like reading, but like listening to people talk. It should be some sort of mutual benefit too, because the podcast gets to talk about something that I wrote about. And then I was quite looking forward to maybe generating ideas, talking to you on the podcast. And so it's kind of go back and forth. Yeah.

So we'll see how well that works out. That happened. I had you on my other podcast in a segment that has not been published yet. And just in the 12 or so minutes we talked, you got a post idea out of it. So maybe that'll keep happening. Yeah. And I mean, honestly, I don't know how much longer we're going to talk here, but I am

very delighted and honored and excited to start this. I know it's weird. It's inevitably going to be a little weird because there is 50% of the podcast missing, being replaced by a somewhat unknown 50% relative to the podcast. And so that part, some level of weirdness is unavoidable, but I hope that it is not too weird. And it is definitely a little terrifying

to try to replace Sam. I shouldn't even say replace because that is impossible. Succeed, Sam. You and him have built a very good thing. And I am going to try my best To make sure that it doesn't suck From January 13th on forward

Good that's a good way to evoke sympathy Is to say something self-deprecating And vulnerable And you have just done both of those things So good job Yeah well you might be unknown to a few people Who listen to the podcast Even though you've been on the podcast

I don't know four four times, I think, but you are a pretty popular guy, generally, in our small little circle, in our little corner of the internet. And a lot of the initial reactions to the news were widespread weeping about Sam leaving, but then, but at least Jeff is replacing him, and I like Jeff,

which is the reaction that I was hoping to have in a co-host so that was nice to see and I've been reading you and listening to you for years and always sort of wanted to be better friends or colleagues or collaborators with you in some

fashion and so I'm happy that this is happening and when I started the podcast with Sam I barely knew him at all we We had met once and sat silently next to each other for an entire baseball game. And I know you a little bit better than that. So I think we have a head start in that respect. And I think it's going to be good. I think it'll be a little different, but I think we can put a compelling product out there. Yeah, we'll kind of feel a way around

how it's going to be different. But I know earlier today, when I was talking to my brother before we left for the holidays, he was talking about John Mulaney, meeting John Mulaney, and how much he wishes that he could just be John Mulaney's friend based on what he's heard

and when he's seen him live. And I wouldn't say that you're quite as funny as John Mul mulaney but you have a charm about you and uh if you could be say the the baseball internet's john mulaney then uh i would observe you and think oh i would like to be friends with uh with the baseball internet's john mulaney so this is an exciting opportunity to be friends hopefully this won't be the the john mulaney's network sitcom of podcasts because that didn't go so well. Well, stay tuned, everyone. No, best case, I hope that this will be like, it'll be like the great debates like, was Cheers better with Diane or Rebecca or was ACDC better with Bon Scott or Brian Johnson?

And there will be people who like one or the other more, but everyone agrees that they were both still worth listening to. And that's what we're going for Being worth listening to Anything to pit me against Sam Yeah, I mean, I don't know I remember when Tino Martinez replaced Don Mattingly And everyone hated Tino Martinez

Because he was replacing Don Mattingly But now Tino Martinez gets standing ovations And everyone loves Tino Martinez Although I guess he still wasn't as good as Don Mattingly. So that maybe is not the best analogy to use here, but he was pretty good and he's widely beloved now. Well, thankfully there's no versions of fan graphs or baseball prospectors out there who are running statistical analysis of podcast hosts.

So we can never really know who's better between us. All right. I guess we can wrap this up. You've got to get to Chile. And this was a weird setting for our first official part of a podcast. But Sam did hundreds of episodes from a car in his garage. So a terminal in the LA airport is not all that weird by comparison. Anyway, have a good trip. And I will be anxiously awaiting your return and I look forward to doing this thing

with you on a regular basis. I am very excited and it's going to help make the return from vacation feel like it's not the end of the vacation. So it's going to be great. Two weeks away. All right. Until then. Take care. Okay. So that will do it for today and for 2016. Thanks so much to those of you who've been listening for years and welcome to those of you who've joined us recently. I know some of you are feeling many emotions right now, but we will get through this transition together. today's big league stars not being part of extended big league families. We missed that Adrian Gonzalez played with the Padres with his brother, Edgar Gonzalez. Good catch by Aaron. And since we were talking about the plausibility of Mike Trout batting left-handed, listener named Brian pointed us toward a Sporting News article from 2015

about Trout hitting left-handed in a high school home run derby. Trout told MLB.com, I actually beat my high school team in home run derby left-handed. They made me hit left-handed in a high school home run derby. Trout told MLB.com, I actually beat my high school team in home run derby left-handed. They made me hit left-handed. They told me I had to hit lefty or I couldn't play. So possibly relevant. You can support the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash effectively wild. Again, the proceeds from your pledges go to me and to Sam and to Jeff and Fangraphs and to Baseball Prospectus and make it possible for us to keep doing the show. And just since the last episode, six new listeners have signed up, which I really appreciate. Their names are John Brousseau, Brian Hare, Mike Livingston, Sean Sangenberger, Joe Rusbars, and Stephen P. Mayer. So thanks to all of you. I'll get one last 2016 plug in for

the book Sam and I wrote, The Only Rules It Has to Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Check out the site at theonlyrulesithastowork.com. Leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you like it. I know a bunch of you got it for Christmas and are working through it now, so I hope you enjoy it. You can join our Facebook group, now approaching 5,000 members at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. For now, you can keep contacting us via email at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon.

Bear with us over the next couple of weeks as the show moves to fan graphs. You shouldn't have to do anything. You'll still be subscribed. The episodes will keep coming and we will still have the old episodes hosted somewhere to be determined, but they'll continue to be accessible. And that's it.

We had a great run with Sam. I hope we have a great run with Jeff. I hope you all have a happy new year. And I will talk to you in 2017. Say hello Say hello Say hello Say hello All right.

Okay. Hey, be well. We did it.