Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1073: The Plus-Plus Podcast

Episode Date: June 21, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the results of Jeff’s survey about what constitutes a “jam,” Justin Verlander’s comments about the height of baseball seams, and a Mike Chernoff quote about working in baseball, then talk to writer Joe Lemire about his glossary of scouting terminology, the evolution of scouting, and the unbreakable link […]

Get out of the sound you see. You don't belong there. Get back to where you should be. Find out what's going on there. Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg. I'm a writer for TheRinger.com. I'm joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello, Jeff. Hello, Ben. The results are in. You know what a jam is or what the internet thinks a jam is, sort of. Sort of.

Give us the results. Well, I can try to do it. It's a little complicated because there is no clear dividing line. Not that I think one could ever think that there was but jams at least according to the community voting results at fangraphs from last week seem to require there to be multiple base runners there's not a good link at all to high leverage situations which makes sense because one scenario where i quizzed the audience was bottom the ninth home team is down by a run

there is a runner on first and nobody out that is a very high leverage situation the leverage index for anyone who knows about that is 5.4 which means it's about 540 percent more I don't know important than an average game situation in any case it's a very difficult situation that's where if you're a fan of the road team and your closer has just walked the lead off batter in the inning, you start to think, oh, here we go again, since everybody hates their closer. But still, only 5% of the audience thought that that was a jam. So that is probably the clearest evidence that leverage is not a huge factor in what a jam is. The point that was closest to the dividing line, I pulled people on 12 different scenarios and one

of them came out at 51 yes to no votes that being uh yes this is a jam so it's the bottom of the sixth and the home team is down by one and they have runners on first and second and there's nobody out that's a 51 jam and i i decided to set my own line at 50 support where if more than half the audience thinks it's a jam then therefore it counts as a jam that situation is i guess it it's jammy because there are multiple base runners but you're missing that that crucial runner on third which clearly would have put people over the top what's interesting is so take that same situation first and second nobody out bottom of the sixth down by one now let's say the batter makes an out and the lead runner moves up to third so now there are runners on the corners with an out and the lead runner moves up to third. So now there

are runners on the corners with one out, bottom of the sixth, down by one. The run expectancy of that situation has gone down. The probability of scoring a run has gone very slightly up, but you still expect to score fewer runs in the inning because of the first out. And yet, 65% of the audience felt like that was a jam. So clearly having a runner on third is a pretty big deal. And yet we'll just keep going through all the results, I guess. Top of the fourth tie game and lead off triple, let's say only 30% of people thought that was a jam. However, if you then put a runner on second behind the lead off triple 95% of people felt like that was a jam. So that's a pretty major difference all because of one extra

runner. Of course, that extra runner is important. That's a runner in scoring position makes a big difference. But I couldn't find a perfect definition out of this. I could have pulled people about 100 different scenarios to get even more precision. But clearly, as far as jams go, people like having multiple base runners leverage is a minor component the margin of the game is a factor but it is not a primary factor i did quiz people on bases loaded nobody out top the first tie game that got 91 jam support so no matter how early a jammy situation takes place it still counts as a jam so it seems like it's base runners first then runners in scoring position then maybe the margin of the game and then there is some sort of leverage link it would appear but that is a tertiary or i don't know

quaternary never said that word out loud shouldn't have tried it on the podcast in any case fun to have results thousands of people voted i appreciate all of their participation and now i have a slightly better idea of what a jam is and so I can move on to polling people about some other baseball terminology. Yeah, like a slugfest. Like a slugfest. Next up on Jeff Sullivan's to-do list. Yeah. Well, that's good because I think either the person who initially asked us to define a jam or someone who responded soon after we first talked about it said that traffic on the bases or having a crowd was a core component of what constituted a jam for him, that it wasn't purely run expectancy or single run probability, but just how crowded, how visually jammy it looked, I guess, just how many runners were on the bases. And I think that

is also true for me to a certain extent. So the crowd has spoken and in its wisdom, I guess that is part of what makes a jam. So go check out the full results. I will link to them in the usual places. And I wanted to mention one quick thing. I was talking to Bug Shambi, the great ESPN broadcaster last week, because he was planning to talk about the baseball and home runs on his broadcast. And he wanted to ask me a few questions before he did. And he asked me whether I had heard anything from pitchers about the seams on the baseball feeling different, because that was one of the primary findings of my most recent article with Mitchell Lichman, was that the seams on the ball seemed to have gotten lower,

which in theory makes the ball travel farther because of decreased air resistance. And I couldn't think of any pitchers who had specifically mentioned the seam height changing. There have been some pitchers such as, I think, Marco Estrada, who have talked about the ball maybe being wrapped differently or feeling different or certainly traveling different. But Justin Verlander has chimed in now, and the Detroit News ran a piece about how the Tigers were debating whether the ball is different and why all the home runs are being hit. And Verlander said, quote, there are no seams on the baseball. Verlander said they're there more just for aesthetics at this point, just to hold the ball together. He doesn't mean that there are literally no seams, but he is suggesting that the seams are a lot lower than they used to be. And this seems like support who would know better

about the seams than Justin Verlander. He's been pitching a long time and I guess it is, but there's this weird thing where I'm not sure how much stock to put in a pitcher's opinion, because on the one hand, they're the authorities. They're the people who've been holding baseballs their whole lives and are the best at throwing baseballs. And if anyone was going to notice that the balls felt a little bit different, it would be someone like Justin Verlander, who's thrown almost 2,500 innings in the majors. On the other hand, pitchers are probably the most likely to be biased or to look for some sort of explanation for why they are giving up all these home runs. Justin

Verlander's highest home run rates of his career have been this season and last season. And last season, he was still a pretty good pitcher, but he was giving up home runs more. Of course, everyone is giving up home runs more. But if you're Justin Verlander and you haven't historically given up lots of home runs and then suddenly you do, then I think it's only natural to look for some explanation other than I'm worse now. And maybe the baseball is the ready-made explanation for that. So I'm not really sure whether to take this as confirmation or confirmation bias, I guess. Yeah, agreed. I know that I think, you know, Saris with Fangraphress has told some stories about

he'll go into different clubhouses and he'll be armed with evidence that the ball has changed. And there have been pitchers who will literally just drag him over to groups of hitters in the clubhouse and say, like, listen to this guy. Listen to that. He knows who he's talking about. So pitchers clearly looking for any kind of reason beyond we're pitching worse or hitters have figured us out. So, yeah, there is a bias in there. I think you're inclined to give someone like Verlander somewhat of the benefit of the doubt because he seems like a straight up guy and he's not making excuses. But even a subtle indirect remark about there being no seam still functions as a partial excuse. So, you know, pitchers have some skin in the game.

Right. Yeah. And it's kind of odd that pitchers would even care because this is affecting everyone. I mean, it's not as if Justin Verlander is worse relative to other pitchers. Every pitcher is giving up lots of home runs. I guess it could be affecting certain pitchers disproportionately, maybe based on what they throw or how they throw. I don't know exactly, but if you're throwing a certain location in the zone or you're throwing harder, I don't know what it is, but there could be guys who are giving up more home runs now. I think you've pointed out that what most of the home runs have been hit in the lower part of the zone, right? Hitters seem to have adjusted to hitting low pitches that pitch someone who's throwing lots of low pitches, maybe you've been burdened by this more than the typical pitcher, which would not be the

case for Verlander, who at least historically was known for throwing higher in the zone. I don't know whether that's still true, but you'd think that, you know, it's affecting everyone. It's affecting the whole offensive environment. It's not like teams are paying any less for pitchers now because the run scoring environment has changed. It sort of affects everyone. And yet, I guess if you're a pitcher, it's still not pleasant to have home runs hit off you. And even if you know that it's something about the conditions that is affecting

all of your peers, it still sucks to have to whip around and crane your neck to see the latest ball that's been hit out against you. Yeah, right. And it's I guess it's kind of like whenever players would complain about a park being too hitter friendly or being too pitcher friendly, where it affects everyone individually. But of course, it affects players generally across the board. Some players will be more affected by others, but players generally are not thinking in a bigger picture context. They're thinking about themselves. And if you are a pitcher like, I don't know, say Clayton kershaw throwing down in the zone more than ever and you're right have already allowed a career high number of home runs look for an article soon at fan graphs probably about that clayton kershaw

has allowed 17 home runs this season he's never before allowed more than 16 so that's a thing he's only started 15 games anyway if you are a pitcher and all of a sudden you're allowing home runs well you feel those home runs you know that you made some kind of mistake and and you know that you were able to get away with a little more in the past so pitchers generally not thinking about what is happening to everybody else this is a dog eat dog kind of world you have to look out for number one and a lot of number ones are allowing a lot of long balls so yeah it would be interesting i guess mike petriello and the mlb.com staff interviewed a bunch of players talking about the home run spike earlier in March, talking to pitchers and hitters. And it would be interesting to, I don't know, ESPN just launched their feature. They have a whole week talking to dozens of Latin American players talking about their experiences coming over to America and transitioning to the culture and the food and Major League Baseball, et cetera. And it's a wonderful feature that continues and it will continue to continue,

I guess. But it would be fun to have a parallel feature, I don't know, season that basically only talks about the home runs and talks to every single person in baseball about the home runs. I don't care how low on the totem pole you are. We would like to hear what you have to say about the home runs just so we can kind of crowdsource the whole thing. All right. You got anything else? One thing, I guess, I was actually going to bring up that Verlander quote,

so I'm glad you got to it. But I just saw the Athletic Cleveland ran an interview with general manager Mike Chernoff. And I saw a quote that was excerpted and retweeted by Travis Sochik.

And this is a useful quote, I think, for anyone out there who wants to work in baseball, which is a very popular and lofty goal for a number of people. I think we've probably both received dozens of emails from people asking how they can work in baseball. So let me just read a quote from Mike Chernoff. And the Chris in this context is referring to Chris Antonetti. Anyway, Mike Chernoff, quote, Chris told me the first 40 hours a week that you work here, you're going to be doing things that you have no interest in. The second 40 hours a week you put in are where you can really separate yourself.

So I don't think anyone's under the illusion that baseball is an easy thing to work in. I don't think anyone thinks that it's just like a casual thing that you dabble in while you kind of try to sort out your career path. You probably can't watch a whole lot of like Hulu from your desk when you work in baseball. But just to take this, taking this literally, you're talking about 80 hour weeks, which I can assure you are true if you're lucky. And you're probably not making overtime or a salary that is commensurate with an 80 hour week. Yeah, you're making horrible money per hour relative to what you probably could be making on the more open market, given the skills that you probably possess to have interested a

baseball team in the first place. And then you basically have two full time jobs, you work them in the same place around the same people. And your first full time job is absolutely terrible. And it's thankless, and you hate it, and you're doing stuff that you don't like. And then for your second full time job, then you can really dive in and try to scramble to get that very partial credit just in case the team that you have assembled lucks its way into a playoff spot so it's thankless you have to well it's not entirely thankless but it's mostly thankless at least for a while and you have to really really like baseball but not only that you have to be very resistant to the uh the burnout effect so uh don't have a life if you intend to work in baseball and if you do work in baseball and

say you're in a relationship you need to be planning like a november wedding and i am planning a mid-october wedding oops all right so we have got a guest. Stats versus scouts was never really a thing, certainly isn't a thing now. But if it were a thing, I think one way in which scouts would have a clear edge would be in the terminology that they have developed over the many years of the baseball scouting institution. I don't know whether stat heads have anything equivalent. We just have weird acronyms and terms like regression and unsustainable, which isn't fun at all. seemingly, because internet videos is exactly what we all need. But he has since added another byline to his collection at Vice Sports, and he wrote a great article collecting the baseball scouting glossary. It's called Good Face, High Ass, and we wanted to have him on to talk about some of the terms he wrote about. So hi, Joe. Hi, thanks for having me.

Yeah, so my first question is, I wonder whether you think that scouting terminology has gotten any more or less rich over the years? Because scouting has changed, and there are more scouts than ever, I think, but they come from different backgrounds, and you have people with more of a quantitative background now in some cases, and you have international scouts who maybe have their own terminology. So do you think that scouting lingo is dying off at all, or is it as rich as it ever was or richer? That's a good question. I think it's moving in a different direction and maybe a little less rich in the way that I tried to collect some of the folksier terms. And I think that that kind of angle on terminology is dying off. And in fact, while pulling around to the, you know, the number of scouts, executives

and writers for this article, one scout who I take, I believe to be pretty prominent, but is on the younger side, even was unable to come up with any good examples saying that the way that he was trained, and, you know, from my understanding, he's from a little bit more of an analytic background, you know, this, he wasn't exposed to some of these terms the way, you know, a lot of the old school scouts are. The scouts you see at your average fair field in and, you know, outside of Port Charlotte, Florida every March, you know, those are the ones that were, you know, are really adding to the vocabulary and adding the richness to it. I do think having more of an international flavor will sort of help build on this. But some of the newer terms are a lot more almost too precise, like swing path and arm slot, which are interesting in their own right, but hardly the same as good face and high ass.

Do you have a favorite on this list? Well, certainly anyone who's seen my Twitter bio will know that I am a proud redhead. And so the fact that I now have an explanation for why my baseball career petered out in high school, knowing that redheads have been biased against for generations is pretty interesting. But it does kind of speak to the fact that, you know, redheads and the other bizarre marginalization of a subset of people is hyphenated names. But the fact that two things that would seem to have absolutely nothing to do with one's ability to play baseball can sometimes be seen as a negative is pretty

interesting. I guess, you know, in some ways, the redheads are almost, were almost more worthy of discrimination. Because, you know, the thought process behind this is that, you know, redheads aren't as good in the hot summer sun. And I have to say, I am about as sunburned prone and sweaty as any human being in the world. And I do struggle with a lot of heat. So maybe there was a little bit of truth to it. The hyphenated names one is totally bizarre. And I heard that one before. That's great. Yeah. What about Austin Bibbins Dirks? Is he changing things for hyphenated name people? You know, the fact that when I first heard this, all I could think of was Ryan Roland Smith and nobody else. It made me think maybe there's something to it.

But it was passed on to me by two much younger scouts who clearly think there's nothing to it, just saying they've heard others speculate about it. I think it kind of falls into that category. It's not quite apocryphal, but one of those where I don't think too many, if any, people think it's too sincere. But the fact that I've heard it from two different sources suggests that it has at least been speculated upon. That I guess, you know, as I wrote in the story, I guess if you have hyphenated names, neither parent is an alpha. And so they might lack a killer instinct, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I have a bias against hyphenated first names because of John Ford Griffin, the Yankees' first-round pick in 2001, who very briefly made the majors with the Blue Jays but never really panned out and got to pick a first name.

That seems like maybe there is some indecision there, although probably he didn't name himself, so can't blame him. Yeah, exactly. And same with the last names, obviously. And frankly, even the parents didn't choose their own last names, although I guess they did choose to conjoin them. But so it goes. I'm speaking to you as a non-Redhead with a rather severe neck sunburn, so I can assure you that none of us are immune. I can also say, as far as the hyphenated names go, Ryan Rowland-Smith, on the one hand, did make the major leagues. On the other hand, is responsible for arguably the worst pitching season of all time in his last year in the major leagues. So something to keep in mind, because wasn't he the first one, at least in the majors? So based on a sample size of one,

not a great aging curve. In any case, you talk about, obviously, the redheads, their soft eyes was one. I know that was more of a basketball term in the article as opposed to a baseball term. But there's also the related good face, bad face. And it's hysterical to read now and to summarize, but to what extent is this kind of laughing about what was essentially a century of institutionalized discrimination within baseball? Well, yeah, I mean, it does seem like some very like superficial judgments were being made. And, you know, this is just sort of, it's a fun relic to look back on. But I do think even some, at least one of the older school scouts that I spoke to,

even he, you know, shared some of these while laughing. I mean, like, even though he might sort of think about it, he realizes, wow, this is, you know, to an outsider, this could seem kind of ridiculous. But you are, you know, it is a whole profession based on discerning discrete qualities of something that no one else has really judged before. I mean, we've never, you know, in human history and mechanics, we've never had such in-depth analysis of these very peculiar motions. You know, some people claim that pitching is a very, you know, overhand throwing is a very unnatural, anti-evolutionary advancement for human beings. And so why would we have a term for arm slaughter, downhill plane in previous generations? So I guess it's, you know, when you're on the road for this many hours, sunbaked into delirium, scouting guys, I mean, why wouldn't you have an occasional epiphany to come up with some new term that you might think really portends to future value, even when it's probably irrelevant? And I mean, presumably at some point, someone made an evaluation based on these nebulous qualities, right? I mean, even if it's become kind of a joke now, or it's something people

sort of pass on laughingly, presumably at some point there was someone who really believed it and made decisions based on it. And maybe the most famous example of this is the good face, which is a funny term. And really, it's perhaps not that different from how many of us operate in real life, whether subconsciously or not. I know that there is a bias, you know, a good looking person, you ascribe positive qualities to that person without knowing anything about him or her. So this is something that extends to all walks of life. And I don't know whether there's any basis for it whatsoever. And maybe it seems more ridiculous in baseball, just because baseball is maybe the activity in our lives that we can quantify the most. And so it's not purely just interpersonal relationships, but in sports,

you have numbers and stats and performance, and it seems like you shouldn't need something like the good face to make a decision about a guy. Maybe that throws it into more relief because it's coming in this heavily statistical endeavor. Yeah. And I think it kind of speaks to that Gladwellian blink phenomenon, you know, that you mentioned with that subconscious, those quick judgments. And I think, you know, the term he's a baseball player kind of fits that. Like, you know, he just seems- We've talked about that on the show before. Yeah, exactly. That he just has this overall ability to do play the sport well, good know-how, or like, you know, similarly, like he has an idea is another one of my

favorites. It's just his brain is functioning and he might know where the strike zone is, which are all things that we all would hope that someone would understand the rule book, but the fact that they're able to apply it is kind of the implication. And so many of these terms out of context seem overly simple or ridiculous, but there, you know, is that spoken truth, there is some sort of implied truth behind it. And I think, you know, there is some value to it. And, you know, as I do try to, you know, in the prologue, make very clear how important scouting is. But just because we see value and seriousness to a profession doesn't mean we can't have a little fun with it too. I'm kind of a, I'm hung up on the soft eyes I love the soft eyes I think it's a sort of evocative

it's easy to visualize what is meant by it even if you know it's all kind of crap one way or another but a two-part question which baseball player do you think off the top of your head has had the softest eyes you can think of and the second part of the question are those eyes really any softer than Ted Lilly's Ted Lilly has great hair and so I can't say I've noticed his eyes because of that hair. But, ooh, tough call on the soft eyes. I guess even after hearing this, I'm not sure. Can you recognize soft eyes? Well, I believe actually, yeah, I'm not sure I can. And if I'm not mistaken with the backgrounds of the people I'm speaking with, one of the three of us has been through scout school.

So I think we have someone else on this call who should be making this assessment. I've also been through LASIK. So I have laser enhanced eyes. I don't know if that's a scouting term. So does that mean your eyes are now sharper as a result? I think so. I hope so. Laser edge.

It costs me a lot. Yeah. Milk drinkers is another really good one on this list. Can you explain milk drinkers? Yeah. It's someone who's a little too wholesome and doesn't quite have an edge to them. That's a good one. And the other one, actually, the other favorite, of course, and there's a text message, Shane, of there are about six of us who are all baseball writers who are three years running now, have all know talking about this that and the other thing but when we do talk about baseball some of these terms often come up for me is definitely a favorite of

this text message chain it's just because you know he's the number three starter for me or you know he's got the range of a statue for me well of course of course it's for me. I mean, I'm not going to pretend to know what your opinion is. So it's such a wonderful superfluous qualifier. But you sit around one of those fair filled in breakfast tables and you're just going to hear for me, for me, for me. Yeah. It's funny because there are a lot of kind of hedge words in here that for me, there's occasionally, which as you quote one scout saying the question is how occasionally that's what matters but but it's funny because scouts seem to demand this alpha quality from players or prize it in players but they do have these verbal tics that kind of hedge

and they don't come out and make definitive proclamations i mean sometimes they do but they have these parts of the scouting vernacular that are kind of qualifiers. You know, they're not coming out and declaring that this guy is that or that, but that occasionally he does this or for me, he is this. Yeah. And sort of speaking to the, not to put on my Dr. Freud hat for a second, but speaking to like the greater psychological backing behind this is that it is just easier for you know to understand something if you can you know put it into buckets or into pigeonholed people into places and that's the whole idea of the comp that we you know it gets talked about a lot too you know and the example i gave was dustin ackley being

somewhere between chase utley and mark kotze which you know two players who other than being left-handed debatters of the 21st century, wouldn't seem to have that much in common. But so often, if there's not a range, if it's just like, oh, the comp for this guy is Mike Trout, well, good luck with that. And then anything else, any deviation is going to be hard to reconcile with the scouting projection. But there was one major league front office I've heard actually assigned to all of its executives to read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, which is a great book of its own right.

And Michael Lewis is giving a lot more publicity to now with his own story. And it really does speak to all these biases that pop into our mind. And so often with a comp, for instance, once you make that connection, it's a lot harder to see a change or see a player for who he is because you're always thinking about that comp in the first place. And some of these terms go that same way where once you see something, it's hard to unsee it. My favorite current example of what I would assume is sort of a baseball bias against the redheaded individual is Cole Calhoun, good player, still underrated on the Angels everyday

player. Very good, never really considered much of a prospect, but he was always good in the system and he just kind of exploded onto the scene. Angels love him and everything. Well, actually, one quick redhead story that I think is also kind of funny is a few years ago when I was still at Sports Illustrated, I contacted them, you know, now that they've been bringing all the draft prospects to Secaucus and having them around, I thought it'd be fun to do like a behind the scenes story for a day in the life of like, hey, this is your draft day. What is it like? And MLB has all these activities for them. And, and of course, so I asked like, hey, is this, you know, is this possible? And the response I got was, well, considering a variety of factors, we think

we best have you follow Clint Frazier around. And if there's any major redheaded prospect, there he is. So we're pigeonholed together. Well, that's convenient because he was actually the name I was about to bring up. Are you encouraged by the fact that Clint Frazier is now a three-time Baseball America top 50 prospect in the major leagues, number 39 before this season. Is that maybe one anecdotal sign that the bias could be disappearing? That, but I think even more than Clint Frazier. I will see you, Clint Frazier, and raise you Pavin Smith, because not only is Pavin Smith the number seven overall pick of the Diamondbacks, being a major redhead, he also, he and I share the same alma mater of the University of

Virginia. So if there can be a redhead from the University of Virginia being a top 10 pick, then clearly things are looking up for me and maybe I should get to the batting cage immediately. I'm looking at the pictures. I do not think Pavin Smith has the good face. Oh no. Well, he has an idea at the plate. He had more walks than strikeouts. Can you talk about horseshit? Because anyone who has read Dollar Sign on the Muscle, which we've talked about on the show before, the great scouting book, knows about this term. But its ubiquity in the scouting community and really the baseball community is amazing if you haven't heard it and just the range of ways it can be used and things that can be applied to. Yeah, it's just interesting that horses are the animal that baseball has jumped onto and latched itself onto. But yeah, like, you know, if a pitcher after a game is talking about, you know, having left up a change up, you know, he'll be like, well, you know, it was a horseshit change up.

having left up a change-up, he'll be like, well, it was a horseshit change-up. He's a horseshit guy was used in that dollar sign in the muscle. The other example from the writers that I heard was everyone who's been to a game will hear the scorekeeper announce the pitcher's line after departing, which is now that we all have MLB.com game day, classic version, of course, in front of us, we all know up to date exactly what the pitcher's line is. So it's this antiquated practice that has no real meaning anymore. But for years and years when it actually had meaning, when a guy had a terrible line, the whole press box would unanimously chime in, and he was horseshit because that's really the sentiment that needs

to be conveyed more than seven runs and 12 walks. Yeah. So it's funny, because there's kind of this conflict between a term like milk drinker, which implies that clean living is a bad thing in some cases. And then you also sometimes hear that someone is a clean liver, which that can kind of double as he's a clean liver and he has a clean liver, as in he doesn't abuse it too much. And so I would think that most scouts, most teams would consider it a good thing if a player takes care of himself

and you wouldn't want the opposite of a milk drinker, like someone who is just slamming Jack Daniels all day. So there is this line where you want some edge and you want red ass, which is another term on here, but you don't want him to go too far. So it's like you need a little bit of an edge, but not so much of an edge. It seems like it's hard to tell exactly where the line is because you don't want a partier, but apparently you don't also want someone who just stays at home and talks to his long distance girlfriend and never goes out or isn't aggressive in some way.

Yeah. Actually, the worst injury I've suffered in my life, a few years ago, I was reaching, it was Sunday night and I was reaching into the cupboard for a glass to have a glass of milk. And I accidentally knocked over a coffee mug mug which shattered on the side of the sink and one in a million shot lacerated my wrist that required 10 stitches, nearly some skin graft, permanent nerve damage on the left side of my hand. Yeah, kind of a weird digression here. But anyway, the point being milk drinking,

not a good thing. But I think in scouting, what you're looking for is that kind of on-off switch where you're looking for guys who can, a you know, harnessing all of their power and edge to those confined, you know, three hours onto the baseball field. But then off of it, you know, the clean living is good. But I think it is hard for for so many guys just to have aggression only when between the lines when you know sometimes you gotta let off some steam off the field as well i apologize for how broad this question might come off as being but you if you run any sort of historic draft analysis of course the the most value historically has come from the first round and specifically from the front of the first round of course the first pick overall has always had the highest average career value,

but there's also any number of very good players who end up selected in every draft. And of course, we still think of it as kind of a crapshoot. And if anything, maybe the first round is more underwhelming in performance than it seems like it should be. So to what extent does it seem like scouts have actually been, I don't know, successful in identifying the things that they think they're identifying? And I understand this is complicated. No one's going to hold you to the words that you say, but I'm still going to defer to you now for the answer. Well, you're still memorializing this on iTunes, I think. So people might hold me to it. I think what analytics has done is provide sort of the back end framework to scouting that had been helpful,

like scouting, identifying players, getting those first opinions and having those mental projections is all very important. But I think it was always, it always had been an issue of how well it translates. I mean, you're talking about, you know, dozens of area scouts plus the bird dogs, you know, helping them out. Then you have a handful of cross-check know, the Southeast area scout, you know, the guy based in the Atlanta area is really pushing for such and such a prospect. Whereas, you know, you got like the Brandon Nimmo who doesn't even have a high school ball in Wyoming, you know, how do you even begin to compare those players? And, you know, perfect game showcases are helping a lot at the high school level, you know, level. You know, the cross checkers seeing some of these guys helps too.

But at the end of the day, you know, all of these different opinions are being funneled to one, you know, scouting director and then ultimately the general manager. And how do you put the appropriate value and weight to such and such opinion? And, you know, even within, you know, a cross checker maybe seeing a player two or three times that is in contention for the first round pick, he might've shown up on a bad day

when the guy was battling a stomach bug, but obviously wanted to play because he knew there were important executives around. I mean, there's so many variables at play that I think scouts have actually done fairly well considering all of that. And I think if you talk to these executives, you find that beyond that first few rounds, there's a lot less order to the draft picks. It's not necessarily

this guy we think is definitely better, but it's this guy we think is under the radar, we can get him later. I remember one of the odd story that I doubt anyone ever read. When I first started covering a little bit of baseball, I was an intern at the Baseball Hall of Fame in summer of 2005 and did a little work for the Oneonta newspaper when the Oneonta Tigers were still in existence. And oddly, that New York Penn League team had, I think it was either 10 or 12 future big leaguers. Three of them ended up on the Tampa Bay Rays, all from very different ways. And I just kind of recreated their different paths. It was a classic Rays finding value. All three of them were like 12th round different paths. It was a classic race finding value. All three of them were like 12th round or later. It was, you know, Burke Badenhop, you know, Matt Joyce,

oh, and Will Rimes. And I remember while talking to Deandre Friedman, just sort of broadly like, hey, what are the odds that these three guys from such late rounds all kind of made it? And he's like, you know, in our draft room, once we get to the 10th round, if we think a guy has even a shred of major league capability, we just take him. Like, you know, he might last a little bit longer, but we just go for it, you know, because there's no sense in holding on because at that point, those odds are so long. And so I think unlike, say, the NFL draft, which is so tightly scrutinized with such a narrow player universe, the baseball one is so broad that it's not quite as,

you know, sensical and ordered. And, you know, I think we see that with some of the overslot bonus money going to later picks kind of indicating that. So I actually think scouts do pretty well given the incredible constraints and logistical difficulties they have.

Yeah, and as we kind of lightly make fun or marvel at the imprecision of a term like he has an idea or these very subjective judgments about someone's appearance or something. I mean, the irony is that this is where scouts can potentially add the most value and will probably continue to add the most value going forward because the better quantified everything gets, the more pervasive stat cast and track man and all of these technologies become, we don't necessarily need a scout to say he's got good spin on his curveball because there's a machine that's telling us he's got good spin on his curveball and maybe it's just as good. And so what you really need the scouts for, what you'll probably always need the scouts for is watching the players and finding out about what makes them tick and whether they are milk drinkers or red asses and whether that will make a difference. And assuming that that is adding some value and is telling you something about the player, that's really more and more probably where the scouting community's value is going

to be coming from. Yeah, it definitely is a changing industry for sure. I did a story at Vocative about vision training. And increasingly, scouts, some of the teams that prescribe to this will do these vision evaluations and not just the visual acuity that your LASIK fixed for you, but sort of like the movement and tracking of the ball. And guys in the scouts are now being handed iPads and having to administer tests. And so it's sort of, you know, they are those creating those interpersonal connections.

They are the one person who can administer these kinds of tests that, you know, you're not going to get from, you know, from a track man. I mean, the industry is definitely changing and it's going to be a lot harder to find that completely under the radar type of prospect. iPad still can't tell you if the eyes are soft. Well, I'm sure there'll be an app for that soon enough. So I just wanted to end with one other piece you wrote for Vokative, your magnum opus, and it's almost come up a couple of times in this conversation because you've mentioned Fairfield Inns and that is of course a Marriott brand. And you wrote an epic piece on the role of Marriott in the life of scouts and sports writers and baseball in general. I will link to this. Everyone should go read it. But for people who are not familiar with this

symbiotic relationship between baseball and Marriott, can you explain how it came to be and what depths it has plumbed? It is, yeah, depths is definitely the proper direction that this has gone. Yeah, so many, you know, scouts and writers have realized they've spent literally more than a decade of their life sleeping in various Marriott properties. Bob Johnson, who scouted three decades, had more than 5,000 nights at the time that I spoke to him, which I figured out was 13 years and eight months. There was another scout, Mark Wiedemeyer, who had millions, literally millions of points. But when you spend 250

nights a year on the road, the last thing you want to do is travel more. So thankfully, they have that catalog. So he furnished his entire house, washer, dryer, patio furniture, three big screen TVs, all with Marriott points, he would stay at some of the same hotels so frequently that he would hand the bellhop a few extra bucks and like keep suitcases there. Like he basically had his own closet at these hotels, because he knew he'd be back. But it sort of started – Marriott was one of – I think it's the oldest continuous hotel loyalty program, which certainly helped. The fact that it had good properties in big cities but it wasn't too fancy of a brand made it palatable for budgets. And it actually started – as far as I could tell on the provenance on this is that a few NBA writers in Texas, Fran Blindberry and Jan Hubbard, who were in Houston, Dallas, they sort of like realized the potential of such a program pretty early on. And then, you know, they knew people like Kevin Kernan, who used to cover a little bit of NBA, you know, Bob Nightingale

got to know those guys. And so the two of them were among those who kind of took it from the NBA, you know, from the basketball writing realm to the baseball writing realm, where, you know, obviously the exponentially more nights on the road made it even more lucrative. And so now you get a beat writer job and immediately everyone around you is like, oh, hey, make sure you get your Marriott card immediately. And then it ultimately leads to any number of random run-ins at Marriott properties across the globe. Because everyone is confined to the same three months for vacation. And everyone obviously will be confined to those same hotels.

Even my wife and I, we went to Aruba this, I guess, two years ago now. And sure enough, Dan Barberisi and Emily Benjamin, two baseball writers who are now married, show on up. And we had a nice time. It show on up. And we had a nice time. It was carnival. So we had a lovely time, the four of us in Aruba together, because why wouldn't you? And Bob, it's actually Nightingale and Evan Drellich covers the Red Sox. The two of them, they ran into each other in two different hotels, like in different winter vacations. I mean, it's just preposterous how this shows up. But maybe my favorite story was the

one writer who, while renting his room, realized it cost so little that he was getting so few points that he went to the front desk and said, hey, can I pay more for my hotel room? And the confused clerk was like, I don't think I have the authority to do that. And so he said, okay, I'll just take a second room. And so he had a completely vacant I'll just take a second room. And so he had a completely vacant second room just so he could accrue a more substantial and robust number of points. Do you think that the, like, are the prices and accommodations particularly good, or is it just the loyalty and the points basically? Like, could it be any brand or is it something about Marriott that is better than the other ones aside from just the points basically? Like, could it be any brand or is it something about Marriott that is better

than the other ones aside from just the points in the loyalty program? I think inertia is definitely part of this. Like once you start accruing points in one place, you don't want to transfer over. The fact that they just bought Starwood opens up a whole nother set of hotels you can choose from. I think, yeah, I think the fact that you know what you're going to get, I mean, how many times, you know, I even confess in the article that I was gold for years and years and years, but never even reached platinum. So I have a taste of what it's like for everybody else. But even I got to the point where like, I'd wake up in a courtyard and, you know, most courtyards are built exactly the same way. And sometimes it would take a disturbing number of minutes to realize which city I'm in. And like, as one of the writers said in the story that, you know, as unpredictable as

this job can be, there still can be that, you know, comfortable familiarity of sleeping in a Marriott. Like, you know, there's something that when you go home at the end of like a late night at the ballpark, it's extra innings, like at least you're going to a place that feels comfortable. And so I think that's, I think it could be any hotel chain, but what Marriott's advantage is having, you know, having a loyalty program that basically started first and also having the variety of locations in all the major cities that have teams, but also a lot of good spring training, you know, Florida and Arizona sites. All right. Well, Joe Lemire is definitely a dude as the scouts say. You can find him on Twitter at Lemire Joe. You should read him wherever he writes.

And thanks for coming on, Joe. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I enjoyed it. Thank you. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Paul Sakamoto, Tim Basuino, Tyler Hodges, Ryan Gabriel, and Greg Scarfo. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. If you're looking for something else to listen to, Michael Bowman and I have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up. We talked to Kyle Bode of Driveline Baseball and Andrew Perpetua of Rotographs and XStats. We got into spin rate and launch angle and stat cast and fancy new training techniques and biomechanics. It was a very cutting edge episode.

Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We'll answer emails next time. Talk to you then. Don't boss him, don't boss him, he's wild in his sorrow, he's riding, hiding his pain. Don't fight him, don't spite him, just wait till tomorrow, maybe he'll ride on again.