Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1085: Indy Ball is Beautiful

Episode Date: July 18, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Mike Trout’s return, the Nats-A’s trade, a Matt Holliday play, and a Jon Heyman tweet, then bring on Mike McIntyre of the Winnipeg Free Press to talk about a borderline unbelievable independent league game and an even more beautifully fake-sounding indy league franchise. Audio intro: Oasis, "Slide Away" Audio interstitial: […]

But too often times, we'll find a way to do what we've done. Oh, let me be the one who shines with you and we can slide away. Slide away. Slide away Slide away writer for The Ringer, and joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. We've got an excellent interview later in this show, continuing our streak of off-the-beaten-path podcast segments. We're talking to Mike McIntyre of the Winnipeg Free Press about an unbelievable game that happened with the Winnipeg Gold Eyes this past weekend, as well as an unbelievable team that plays in the Gold Eyes League. But before we get to that, some quick actual Major League Baseball.

Just wanted to mention Mike Trout returned on Friday. He has played all three games over the weekend. His very first time on base, I believe, or the third inning of his first game back, he stole second base headfirst, which is exactly how he hurt himself some seven weeks earlier, trying to steal second base or actually stealing second base, sliding headfirst. So clearly has not been dissuaded from trying to steal second or from sliding headfirst. Mike, be careful out there. We don't want you to hurt yourself again. I do like to see you steal bases and headfirst slides are sort of exciting but also unsafe and if you can't slide a different way just be careful out there we can't afford to lose you for an extended stretch again so mike trout still engaging in risk-taking behavior but

still great at baseball ah just wonderful to have him back so we can finally now watch him try to catch up to all of his competitors among at least position players and wins above replacement which is the thing that we care about and nobody else does but yes i don't know where it is exactly but something like a two-win difference right now between mike drow and aaron judge drought will have jackie bradley doing his part by robbing judge's home run that's right baseball that's results-based analysis has made this uh closer than it uh than it could have been that probably would have been worth well i don't know about point somewhere between 0.1 and 0.2 war so trout at present standing at 3.5 judge at

present at 5.3 look at that the gap is already narrowed by uh what is that we're at 1.8 i believe at the ulster break the gap was 2.1 interesting stay tuned yeah narrowing the gap by three tenths of a win already in three games at that rate he will pass him very soon yeah and do you have anything to say about the a's trade i feel like this is a baseball podcast we should mention if a notable trade happens you wrote about it it was pretty predictable at least in the fact that the nationals got some relievers we didn't know which relievers they would be and there might be still more relievers heading there in the next couple weeks but anything notable about the trade that sent sean doolittle and ryan madsen to the a's for Blake Trinan and prospects?

Pretty big trade, I guess, as these things go. Also, pretty predictable trade. As you mentioned, I think we all have known for at least three and a half months that the Nationals were going to make a trade at some point in the year to improve their bullpen because it was not very good. And it's only gotten worse. Sean Kelly's been bad and hurt and et cetera. So they went and got Ryan Madsen, who has had a good year after having a pretty mediocre year. And they got Sean Doolittle, who's having a great year, but has also constantly been on the disabled list with shoulder problems. So the Nationals look a lot better today than they did yesterday. But it's a it's a big roll of the dice, even though every trade is a roll of the dice.

There are some pretty big red flags, kind of scary. We don't know if do little shoulder will allow him to be available even for the playoffs and ryan madsen is coming up on 37 years old and he was not very good last season but nevertheless big improvement for the nationals i have been a uh a blake trinan fanboy for a few years which has been an increasingly difficult thing to explain uh he are positives, right? There's a positive. He throws a hard sinker.

He is surprisingly, to me, 29 years old. I still think of him as a young, developing kid. He's almost my age. I am not developing in any way. So still, I am a believer in Blake Trinan and the potential of a sinker. He is also, for some reason, in the last month or month and a half, been throwing a sinker harder than ever. So there's something to like about Blake Trinan. the potential of a sinker. He is also, for some reason, in the last month or month and a half, been throwing a sinker harder than ever. So there's something to like about Blake Trinan.

He's throwing a changeup. I think it's possible the A's could try to stretch him out, maybe have another kind of Andrew Triggs on their hands, except one who's not having surgery for a hip laborman. And there are two prospects because the Nationals still had prospects. They gave up their second round pick from last year and their third round pick, their third

round pick, who, if not for Tommy John surgery, could have been a first round pick. So I think the easiest way to think about it is that the A's picked up two second rounders and a Blake Trinan in exchange for two good relievers who might at any point become bad or unavailable relievers. But nevertheless, Nationals did not trade for David Robertson, but I guess still could because they will probably still want one more reliever. Yeah. Okay. Only other thing I had planned to mention, well, maybe we should mention that Matt Holiday base running play. I talked about it with Michael Bauman on the Ringer MLB show too, but if you have any thoughts, if you've seen it, the crazy Holiday base running play from Saturday's Yankees-Red Sox game, which went 16 innings. And in the 11th, Holiday, it wasn't clear what he did, but he was on first base after a walk. Jacoby Ellsbury grounded to first. Holiday, instead of running to second and being forced out as one does,

instead returned to first base, slid back into first base, and in so doing, distracted Mitch Moreland, the first baseman. The throw went into foul territory. There ensued something like a nine-minute replay review as the umpires tried to figure out what the heck just happened, why Matt Holliday didn't do the thing that every other runner does in that situation, including Matt Holliday in the previous 14 years of his career. And I still don't know what happened exactly. I think possibly Holiday thought that the force wasn't in effect because he might've thought that Moreland had already touched first and that he

would then need to be tagged out to be out. I'm not sure if he thought that. It would be hard to think that because Moreland wasn't really anywhere near the bag when he fielded that ball, but I guess it might have been hard for Holiday to see. Anyway, Holiday was ruled out, but there was no interference called on the play, so the Red Sox played the rest of the game under protest because Jacoby Ellsbury, the runner at first, was not ruled out and didn't end up mattering or leading to any runs in that inning. But it was extremely strange, and I don't think I've ever seen that before. A runner in the midst of a double play trying to run back to first base, and it evoked Germany Schaefer trying to steal first base way back in the day

before that was outlawed as a result of his attempting to do that. I don't know if we'll ever see that again or whether there needs to be any prohibition for someone doing that, but it was strange. Not as strange as the game that we're about to talk about with Mike McIntyre, but by big league standards, pretty weird yeah pretty weird but like you just said i guess baseball will give you things you've never seen before and all that stuff but this was maybe only the second weirdest event to take place in organized baseball on saturday night i was uh i was not at home on a mountain usual weekend stuff but i uh i came home and i was all prepared to read about the weird play and watch the video and then the uh the a's and the nationals made the trade so then i got distracted did not watch Matt Holiday. Will subsequently watch Matt Holiday and a nine-minute replay review for some reason immediately upon the conclusion of recording this podcast. Yeah. Don't need to watch all nine minutes of the replay review.

I told you how it ends. The only other thing I wanted to mention, a tweet today, Monday, from John Heyman, with whom I shared an MLB Network set on Friday. He is encroaching on our corner as the watchers of non-revelatory slash revelatory trade rumors, and I believe he's subtweeting Buster Olney here, from what I can tell,

because Buster Olney had a report about how the Padres are basically trying to get as much as they can for Brad Hand, which, of course, why wouldn't they? And John Heyman tweeted, Enjoyed the report that the Padres are, quote-unquote, intent on getting as much as they can for Brad Hand.

Period. Hashtag no kidding. So he's engaging in some media criticism here. Heyman's supposed to be one of the people who is making these tweets. Instead, he has become a critic of these tweets, so I guess that we have some company now. I think he's been pretty steady in...

Every so often, Heyman will just throw off a tweet that's critical of ESPN, so I think that's the one media network that he's willing to go after. I don't know if there's some sort of detente between him and Rosenthal, but Heyman and ESPN, definitely not fans. All right. Anything else? No, I was scrolling back through Heyman's Twitter feed to see if I could find a tweet that was

similarly non-revelatory, but I don't really feel like doing that. There's a bunch of retweets of the same articles. So no, I don't think I have anything good that would have put him in his place, but just assume hey we all do it he's done it before but it is funny because it's a it's a new way i guess of expressing the same garbage that we hear right over that deadline we can all come up with the uh the hypothetical non-revelatory revelatory trade river tweets but the one of the padres being intent on getting as much as they can it's just a very slightly new twist on a a familiar flavor so it's it's at least a different

wording all right well we will take a quick break we will be right back with mike mcintyre It's real. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. It's real. So on Sunday, our attention was drawn to a Twitter thread by one of our followers slash listeners, Gordon Comstock And this thread was From earlier in the weekend And it was from a writer Named Mike McIntyre who Works for the Winnipeg Free Press He covers sports and

Crime and the legal system which seems Like an interesting combo that I will ask About in a second but he was At a really crazy game over The weekend and those of you who Have read my book or have been Listening to the podcast for a while know that I have a soft spot for the independent leagues. Lots of crazy stuff happens in the independent leagues. And Mike covers the Winnipeg Gold Eyes who are in the American Association.

And that should also be familiar if you've read the book. They were kind of the next rung up in the independent league hierarchy from the Sonoma Stompers. So they were the league that were stealing all of our players. But a good league, kind of a mid-tier independent league. And Winnipeg is, as we speak, a game behind the St. Paul Saints in the North Division of the American Association. And at this level of baseball, there are some players you have heard of. And like Reggie Abercrombie, for instance, is on the Winnipeg Gold Eyes, former major leaguer. So this was just a really incredible game.

And we wanted to have Mike on to talk about it. So, Mike, hello. And please tell us how you came to be a person who is on both the Crime Beat and the Winnipeg Gold Eyes Beat. Yeah, good to be here. Thanks for having me on. on both the crime beat and the Winnipeg Gold Eyes beat. Yeah, good to be here. Thanks for having me on.

And yeah, it was about just a year ago, right around this time that I actually moved out of the crime beat that I had done exclusively for 19 years here in Winnipeg. I've been covering courts and justice. I've written six true crime books. I host a nationally syndicated crime radio show across Canada that I'm actually still doing, even though I'm now dabbling in sports. But yeah, I've sort of gone into a weird hybrid. I like to consider myself sort of the ultimate utility player. I still do some crime, more

features and investigative pieces, but I'm also mixing in my love of sports and baseball, golf, hockey, cover the Winnipeg Jets and their farm team, the Manitoba Moose. And baseball is definitely something that I've loved since I was a little kid. So to be able to cover baseball, and I came on at a really interesting time last summer. Actually, the Winnipeg Gold Eyes were just really heating up last year. They went on to win the American Association Championship against the Wichita Wingnuts. And I followed the team down to Wichita and covered that final series. That's the third championship in the 24-year history of the Goldeyes. So, yes, it was kind of a nice introduction to jump right in and follow a team that actually won it

all. And here we are now into my second season of following the goal. I was in there kind of right in the thick of things. And yeah, I mean, I've watched a lot of baseball. I watched baseball any and every opportunity I get. Again, since I was a kid, I'm 42 years old. And I must say what went down Saturday night in Winnipeg at Shaw Park, there's actually a few things that I must say, I don't know that I'll ever see again. Yeah. Well, before we get to the specifics,

are you at every Gold Eyes game or home game? Are you always there? Yeah, I've been at every home game so far this season. We're not traveling with them, at least for the regular season this year. So not on the road with them, but I've been at every home game so far this year and they're now almost 60 games into their season. So give or take about 30 games. And yeah, I mean, it's one of those sort of, I guess, only an independent baseball. Now we have to stress that I guess this isn't unique for independent baseball. The rosters are a lot smaller because this is going to play into what we're going to talk about here. The Winnipeg Goldeyes, for example, right now are carrying 21 players on their roster. Teams can carry up to 23, but there's a rookie minimum that's required.

If you want to have 23, you got to have five rookies. The Goldeyes only have three rookies, which is the mandatory minimum. And as a result, they can only carry 21 players. Another unique thing that we often see here in the American Association is teams that come up to Winnipeg, like the Kansas City T-Bones who were here in town this weekend. Every now and then, they run into some issues with getting players across the border. And so I've seen many series last year and this year where teams which already have very small rosters, not a lot of bench and bullpen extras that are actually depleted even more, whether it's a criminal conviction on a player or perhaps just a visa issue.

Winnipeg is the only Canadian team in the 12-team American Association. And so some of these American teams coming up here have some issues. I'm not sure exactly what happened with Kansas City. I think they had an injury or two and maybe a border issue or two, but they were really shorthanded when they came up here this past weekend for a three-game series, and it definitely factored into what happened Saturday night. Yeah, there's some foreshadowing in there. So you say you watch a lot of baseball whenever you can, and you watched a lot of baseball on Saturday night. I'm just going to read a headline of a story of happened in the game. Could you please, in as few or as many words as possible, explain to everyone what in the heck happened on Saturday?

Because I've never heard of this either. Well, here, I'll build to a bit of a crescendo. First of all, this game never should have gone to extra innings in the first place. Because with two outs in the ninth inning, the Gold Eyes were up 9-7. Kansas City had nobody on base. There were two strikes against their batter, and their batter hits a routine fly ball to right field that a very sure-handed right fielder named David Rome for the Gold Eyes.

All he has to do is make a very simple catch, and the game is over. That would have been the Gold Eyes' sixth straight win. They'd been blowing out their opponents. In fact, they'd just beat Kansas City the night before 16-1, so they look poised to win their sixth in a row. All David Rome has to do is catch the ball. For some bizarre reason, the second baseman of the Gold Eyes, he actually had run out to the outfield, I guess thinking maybe he might have a play on it, and I think even though he sort of called himself off, I think his presence maybe distracted Rome for a second because Rome drops the ball.

And, you know, what happens when you give a team another life? Well, the very next batter crushes a two-run home run. Suddenly a 9-7 sure victory has turned into a 9-9 tie. And so off we go. The Gold Eyes don't score in the bottom of the ninth. So off we go to extra innings. Fast forward now all the way to the 13th inning. And I won't bore you with what happened in the 10th, 11th, 12th,

other than to say both teams had tons of chances to score. Neither does. In fact, at one point, Kansas City loads the bases with nobody out and they don lead in the top of the 13th, and you think, okay, that's probably it. But out comes Kansas City now for the bottom of the 13th. They, too, have run through their entire bullpen. They bring their center fielder in to pitch. And now, every now and then, you do see position players,

probably more so in the American Association than say in MLB, who are called upon to pitch. Teams will want to save their bullpen because they're very small, especially if a game is a blowout. I've never seen a team bring in a center fielder to try and get the save, which is essentially what they're doing here. Predictably, that doesn't go very well. Although he was throwing hard, I guess as a center fielder you got a good arm he was actually he hit 90 91 a couple times with his fastball so not bad but the gold eyes managed to score two off him and we're tied again off to the 14th inning we go the gold eyes last reliever who seemed like he was on his last leg he manages to gut out one more inning and now to

the bottom of the 14th we go and this is where it gets totally bizarre um i was wondering are they going to leave their center fielder in because he didn't do very well but no they bring out a new pitcher well their new pitcher was the guy who two nights ago had just thrown 105 pitches in a near complete game one nothing loss and he wasn't even on their sort of list of available pitchers obviously on two days rest but i guess they decided that this was better than the other alternatives so he starts taking his warm-ups and we're all up in the media box and we're noticing that the sheet says that he's a right-handed pitcher and he starts warming up with his left hand. And so at first we're sort of looking at this thing, well, maybe this is a typo and all of us sort of quickly Google the guy's name.

And now we're looking and no, everything says he's, he's a righty. What the heck is going on here? Well, we would later find out of course, that he essentially had a dead arm from throwing 105 pitches right-handed with his dominant arm the night before. So whether it was he who convinced his manager to let him come in and throw with his wrong arm or the manager asked him, I don't know the answer to that. All I know is this guy comes in throwing with his left arm. His fastball is topping out at 70. And he is nowhere near the plate. The first two batters, he throws eight balls. And the Goldeyes suddenly have first and second, nobody out.

The next batter sack bunts them over. And he bunts it off what is not a very good pitch. But now you got second and third one out. The winning run, of course, standing 90 feet away on third. So what does Baseball 101 say you should do? Well, you now walk the next guy, right, to set up the potential inning-inning double play. Unlike Major League Baseball, the American Association has not adopted the automatic intentional walk. You've still got to throw four wide.

Well, this guy couldn't throw one wide he totally misses his catcher with his left-handed wrong arm throw sails it to the backstop and in trots the gold eyes runner for the most surreal 12 11 14 inning victory i think the most incredible aspect of all of this to me might be the fact that with a pitcher throwing with his wrong other goofy facts as well first of all one of the winnipeg gold the leadoff hitter for the winnipeg gold i uh gold is a guy named andrew sone had a career game he went six for eight with seven rbis so that's pretty good as well joe jackson the great great grandnephew of shoeless joe jackson who was actually drafted by the texas rangers a few years ago and then cut loose from affiliated ball joe jackson is a member of the kansas city

t-bones he had three rbis including a home run and in fact he could have been the hero in this game i mentioned earlier kansas city had bases loaded nobody else well joe jackson came up with one out and actually struck out so So, I mean, you had all these things going on, these sort of little subplots, but of course it all gets overshadowed by the most, you know, I don't know. I didn't get a chance. The game ended at midnight. I didn't get a chance to talk to the manager that night. Was that really the best option? I mean, might they have not just been better to maybe use another position player and then i'm even thinking okay he's throwing with his wrong hand his left hand and he walks the first two guys now you get the sack button wouldn't it have been wise of him to at least if he's going to

intentionally walk a guy couldn't he have thrown four pitches with his right arm even though at least at least get that right um and so i mean how much stress is that gonna put on your arm to just throw an intentional walk but instead he still uses his wrong hand and it cost them the game and then again this is a this was a game i mean it's only game 54 of 100 and 100 game regular season schedule. But heading into that night, Kansas City was half a game up on the gold eyes for the wildcard playoff spot. So this isn't just some nothing game that will have no implication on the standings. This could actually end up costing perhaps a playoff spot down the road to Kansas City, they may look back at how this all played out and regret it. Wow. So this pitcher, Matt Sergei, I guess is his name, S-E-R-G-E-Y. How did his

left-handed motion look? Did he look like you or I would throwing left-handed or did it look like he had done this before? Put it this way, my 16-year year old son was actually, he does the, he works the pitching radar at the, at the Gold Eyes game. So he was long done his shift. He's actually sitting up with me in the media box watching game. He plays baseball himself. He's 16. And when he watched this, this pitcher warming up, he turned to me in all seriousness and said, I can throw harder than this guy. And, and then he said, you know, maybe they should put me in. And in fact, that probably wouldn't have been the worst idea. Maybe sign him to a quick contract because his motion was terrible.

The velocity was terrible. And the accuracy was completely terrible. You know, he wasn't even coming close. And like I said, I don't know, like, does this guy mess around maybe in practice sometimes with his wrong hand? Like, how would that even have come up as a potential option? Wouldn't you, there had to be another position player they could have used, you would think. Even keeping the center fielder in who had just given up the blown save one inning earlier, to me, at least that guy could throw somewhere around the plate and he was coming close to hitting 90.

To me, he probably had a better chance going with that option, but maybe they didn't want to blow the center fielder's arm out either by having him work an extended outing. But yeah, it's one of those sort of only in uh only in the minor league kind of stories because i can't imagine that you would ever see this happen in major league baseball where a pitcher would come out and intentionally throw with his other arm it reminds me i mean there was that pitcher a few years ago right right pat vendetti yeah was he ambidextrous? Is that the term? Mm-hmm. But he actually could do that. Yes.

This guy, I don't know if he's trying to become one of those, but I would say after his outing on Saturday night that he should stick to his right arm. So if you had to choose, I understand you're coming from a somewhat biased perspective, but if you had to choose which was the worst managerial decision? Was it the sacrifice bunt after the two consecutive walks, or was it the intentionally walking the bases loaded so there was nowhere to put the next guy who was probably going to draw a walk anyway? Yeah, I mean, you intentionally walk that guy.

I think even if he had tried to legitimately pitch to him, it was going to end up being a walk anyways, because he wasn't even in the right time zone with his pitches. Yeah, I mean, you can go down the list of decisions. I guess I get why they sack bunted, even though it was probably inevitable what was going to happen. And I guess at the end of the day, it worked out because they got the guy at a third who then came home on the wild pitch and they won the game. Yeah, very bizarre set of circumstances. And it actually created a situation where both teams, again, they completely blew out their bullpens. They then played again yesterday afternoon in Winnipeg. Kansas City ended up winning that game in a rout and ending the Gold Eyes winning streak.

But again, both starting pitchers had to go really deep into that game. I think the Goldeyes starter yesterday threw close to 130 pitches, which is a lot because they were trying to save the bullpen. And in fact, the Goldeyes in the ninth inning brought their designated hitter into pitch yesterday. They were down 11 to one at the time. And so again, that's more the situation where you would do that, not in an extra inning tie game or a save situation, which is when Kansas City called upon both these situations to play out. So your game story was posted at 12.11 a.m. Can you take us through how many revisions, how many starts from scratch you went through to

get there? Yeah, you bet. So what I haven't talked about is actually Kansas City was winning this game 7-2 in the fifth inning. I just sort of picked up the story in the ninth with the Gold Eyes up 9-7, but actually Kansas City was up 7-2. So, I mean, I actually started to hammer out a bit of a game story around the fifth inning when it was 7-2 Kansas City. You know, you start playing with different leads and stuff. And so I was going with, you know, all good things must come to an end. Kansas City sort of finally stopped the Goldeyes winning streak. So I had that version.

Then the Goldeyes wore back with seven unanswered runs of their own to turn a 7-2 deficit into a 9-7 lead. Off to the ninth inning they go. So now I've got that version of the story ready to go. The Goldeyes bring in their closer who hasn't blown a save all year. In fact, he's an all-star in this league and he's 13 for 13 on save opportunities. And again, he gets the first two outs really quickly and then this routine fly ball that should have been caught and ended the game so now version three of the story has to be written when the 9-7 turns into 9-9 then of course in the top of the 13th kansas city scores twice so now i start and now we're really close to deadline so

now i'm i'm hammering that one out that k Kansas City pulls it out in extra innings only to have the Gold Eyes, of course, tie it up again in the bottom of the 13th. So now I got to rewrite that. And then, of course, the final version with all that happened in that 14th inning. But we did get it up online and I tweeted about it. And that's where a lot of folks have picked it up. I think, you know, I left the game that night thinking that I'm not going to see this sort of thing probably happen ever again. And I think a lot of people who've shared my tweets about it sort of recognize it, that it's one of those quirky stories that make baseball such a great game and make minor league baseball, you know, such a neat thing at at times because just when you think you've seen it all, along comes something or a bunch of things that you may not have expected. So taking a step back from Winnipeg and looking at the American Association in general, there's something that we noticed when we were going over the standings immediately prior to this podcast.

I noticed comparing the 2016 and the 2017 American Association standings, a couple teams are missing, a couple teams are new. Laredo Lemurs are gone, the Joplin Blasters appear to be gone, and they've been replaced by the Cleburne Railroaders, and one team known as the Salina Stockade. And so I can put this in some perspective for everybody. Teams have played between 50 and 55 games, and there's a pretty ordinary distribution of wins and losses among the 11 other teams and then there are the Salina Stockade with six wins and 48 losses what is the deal with the Salina Stockade and how come they are doing so much worse than the new Cleburne Railroaders actually the

Salina Stockade have been pretty hot lately they won two games in a row a couple weeks ago and my my prediction at the beginning of the year was that they were going to lose 90 of their 100 games. So I'm pretty much on par with that. This, again, is one of those stories that I suppose it's one of those that maybe gives minor league baseball a bit of a bad reputation or a black eye. The Laredo Lemurs were all set to compete in the league again this year. And in fact, the 100-game schedule had all been made up two weeks before the season began. And the season begins in mid-May. So this was right at about the beginning of May. Comes a bit of a bombshell out of Laredo that the team is ceasing operations and basically folding,

that there's some kind of dispute that actually went to court. It involved the city and a whole bunch of lawyers got involved. There was some kind of breakdown amongst the ownership. I believe there were three different co-owners. And so they have this big sort of legal battle. And I guess the league had kind of given them a drop dead deadline to kind of get their affairs in order. They missed that deadline. And so two weeks before the season is set to begin, the Laredo Lemurs fold. Well, it's a 12 team league and having 11 teams all of a sudden was going to be a bit of a nightmare because you'd always have one team, you know, sitting on the sidelines, essentially having a buy series while everybody else played. And they play these 100 games in like 110 days. So you can't really do that. So the solution,

the last minute solution was to bring the Salina stockade into the fold. Salina was actually a team playing in a different independent league called the Pecos, P-E-C-O-S, the Pecos League. Yeah, and for people who don't know, the Pecos League is the lowest run of the independent league ladder. So we get a lot of hypothetical questions like what would happen if you put a college team in double A ball or a double A ball team in the majors or something like that. This is essentially what has happened here. We the answer they would get killed on a nightly yeah because that is basic now believe it or not this salina team is apparently a bit of an all-star team of the pecos league so this is their best and they are getting annihilated as i said they've actually played a little bit better lately because i think i'd have to go back i think they were 2 and 29 at one point so they've actually they've increased their their win percentage a little bit in the

last 20 or so games but yeah they are getting pumed. And the other thing is they are playing 100 road games this year. They are a true traveling team. There is no home stadium for them. They are playing every game on the road. In fact, they actually played the Winnipeg Gold Eyes in a three-game series earlier this year in Wichita, which is a few hours away, Wichita, Kansas. So when I say they're playing all their games on the road, they're playing about 50 of their games in the other teams, like in their opponent's stadiums, and they're playing what would be their 50 home games

in neutral sites, in other league stadiums, but not against that team. So for instance, Winnipeg and Salina played a three-game series early in the year in Wichita. And this is happening on the regular, where Salina will play an American Association team in another team's stadium, where there's no rooting interest for any fans. So earlier this year, the Goldeyes and Salina played a three-game series. You want to take a guess at what the combined attendance, and the American Association actually listed the attendance for each game on their official game sheet. The combined attendance

for the three-game series was 19. Five people on the Monday game, eight people on the Tuesday and six on the Wednesday. I wasn't on the road, of course, with the team, but I was talking to a few of the Gold Eyes people and I'm like, who are these 19 people? They played these three games on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday afternoon in May and the stadium was open. I guess these 19 total people, a couple of them were family members of players on the Salina team, but the rest were apparently people who just wandered in off the street because they heard something going on at the stadium, and they sort of walked in curious to see what it was. So it is, I mean, they're essentially playing a lot of their games in

completely empty stadiums and they're getting slaughtered and then you also have a complete imbalance because salina there's three divisions in the american association of four teams each well the gold eyes play salina three times total in their 100 games the teams that are in the division with salina play them 20 19 and 19 times it's why the wichita wingnuts are going to win about 75 games this year because they just beat up on them non-stop uh texas and cleburne the other two teams in the division they're also terrible their their records are actually better than they really are because they've been able to beat salina a bunch of times otherwise wichita would just be absolutely running away with the division they kind of are anyways but yeah it's

not an ideal situation it's all going to get fixed next season there's a new team uh schomburg in in illinois a suburb. The Boomers. Yeah, so they are joining the American Association. They'll be the 12th team next year, and Celina can go back to the Pecos League. Oh, man. I'm going to have to embed myself with the stockade for the rest of this season and write a book about them or something

because I'm fascinated now. Get your Celina stockade jerseys and foam fingers and what have you, because, yeah, they're not long for this league. That's for sure. To put this into perspective, they have a 7.6 team ERA right now, and this is not like a crazy offense league or anything. This is a league with a 4.3 league ERA, even with Celina included. So they are just completely outclassed here although to be fair although their record is 6 and 48 their pythagorean record is 9 and 45 oh there you go maybe they've been a little unlucky they're underachieving yeah clearly yeah if you look at

salinastockade.com they actually still list pecos league standings on the front page they seem to be in a certain amount of denial. I will too. And I think the league is as well, because if you go to the American Association website, under their transactions, they don't list anything Salina does. Under the attendance figures, they only provide attendance for the other 11 teams.

And it makes sense. If you included Salina's attendance, it would completely drag the league down because they essentially have no attendance. It's almost one of those nobody really wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room. But again, I guess given the alternative of having to find a replacement with two weeks to the start of the season, I guess this was the best they could come up with. And unfortunately, I mean, again, this is a league where four teams make the playoffs, the three division winners, but then the wildcard spot.

I know there was a lot of concern at the beginning of the year that the wildcard was going to come out of the same division as Salina because these other teams would get to beat up on them. Well, as I said, Texas and Cleburne are also terrible. So neither of them looks like a threat to win the wildcard. And I guess it'll come out of one of the other two divisions, which is probably for the best. Yeah. Wow. All right. So we started out talking about baseball and we ended up talking about crime. We covered both of your beats. Absolutely. Yeah, it's definitely, you know, I've gone from stealing cars to stealing

bases, I guess is one way of looking looking at it. I should note, not personally stealing cars. Right, yes. Well, this was a pleasure. I am glad we came across your Twitter thread and that you were there and that this was a home game so that you would be in attendance to tell the world about

this game and this event. You can find Mike on Twitter at MikeOnCrime. You can find Mike on Twitter at Mike on crime. You can find them also at Mike on crime.com and read them in the Winnipeg free press. And thanks again for coming on. This was a delight. Yeah. Looking forward to what the rest of this week brings actually the gold eyes kick off a three game home series tonight against St.

Paul who they are now in a dead heat with for first place. So maybe there'll be some more strange happenings. You never know, I guess. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much, Mike. Thanks, guys. You bet. Take care. Yeah, thank you. Okay. That was amazing. And since we stopped talking, we've uncovered a few more facts we wanted to mention. You want to tell the people what we've discovered? Sure. Let's do a little bit of stuff so uh shoeless joe jackson's what great great grandnephew was already mentioned in this interview however we uh we've also come across the fact that the wichita wingnuts for example are managed by one pete rose jr so that is one fun fact there is also matt chavez who

you wrote about you have some relationship, at least with Matt Chavez's terror. Yes. Anyone who has read the book remembers Matt Chavez as the Stompers' main adversary on our rivals in the league, the San Rafael Pacifics. And he was amazing. He hit like Barry Bonds that year in the Pacific Association. He then got a chance to play 15 games for the Padres, high A affiliate, at the end of that year. And he has also played 10 games for the Giants A-ball team in 2014. That's the extent of his affiliated ball experience, but he has completely crushed it every year in the Indy Leagues lately and has triple-digit OPSs for the Wingnuts this year and last year. So Matt Chavez now now 28 but still scary he is uh among

everybody who's batted pretty often in the american association this year he's been the second best hitter just behind john nogowski nogowski i don't know as a quick throwaway also in this league but batting poorly is one tony campana who you will remember for being a a flying chicago cub He's batting very poorly and not stealing that many bases. So he has at least hit a home run. But I think the more interesting than Joe Jackson, more interesting than Matt Chavez, more interesting than Pete Rose Jr. and Tony Campana, we have the manager of the Salina Stockade, about whom we spoke for about 10 or 15 or 90 minutes. I'm not really sure. In an interview, the manager of the Salina

Stockade is one J.D. Drote. Now, In the interview, the manager of the Salina Stockade is one J.D. Droty. Now, many of you, probably all of you, let's just say all of you are unfamiliar with J.D. Droty. I'd never heard of him. He doesn't have a baseball reference page. There's not a not a whole lot of baseball background on him. And that is for a good reason. So I'm just going to go ahead and read some select excerpts from an article I found from PicosLeague.com. The headline is J.D JD Drody from host family to reality TV star. And there's a picture of an old man arguing with an umpire in front of a camera. So this story was written on September 30th, 2014. It does not have a byline. So apologies to

the author. But in any case, let's just read some about Salina Stockade manager J.D. Drode. Remember, the Salinas Stockade, as of this speaking, are 6 and a 48. J.D. Drode has no prior managerial experience, and we begin. J.D. Drode is the manager of the Trinidad Colorado Triggers and is clearly one of the more interesting characters in the Pecos League. J.D. is from Hull, Texas, and graduated from Stephen F. Austin in Nogarochas, Texas. J.D. then joined the Air Force as a second lieutenant. In Vietnam, Drode flew 44 combat missions in the B-52. While in the Air Force, J.D. earned an MBA from University of North Dakota. He retired in 1986 as lieutenant colonel, where he served as assistant deputy commander for resource management at Torrejon Air Force Base, Spain.

I am certain I pronounced that incorrectly during his span in the Air Force. J.D. lived in Sacramento, Fort Worth, Grand Forks, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Louisville. You will notice to this point no mention of baseball. After his retirement from the Air Force, J.D. attended and graduated from Harvard Law School. J.D. Droty practiced law in Oregon and Kentucky where he worked for large law firms. He was earning a master's and a PhD in political science at the University of Kentucky. Droty then was an assistant professor of government for four years at Western Kentucky Still. No mention of baseball. J.D. then moved to Eli, Minnesota, where he was chief operating officer and chief academic officer at Vermillion Community College. He served there two years

before he decided he would retire for good, retire for good from a career that had nothing to do with baseball. J.D. moved to Alamogordo, New Mexico in 2002 to get out of the cold. From 2003 to 2013, J.D. was instrumental in the Alamogordo Music Theatre. Music Theatre, part of the story. He produced three plays and he wrote two plays. In 2010,

the Pecos League announced the arrival of the White Sands Pupfish. J.D. was immediately intrigued and served. Wait, will you think it's as a coach? No, he served as a host family in 2011 for the Pupfish. JD housed three members of the Pupfish and wanted to be a part of the league. JD was the team photographer and helped with a variety of roles. In 2012, the Pecos League expanded to Trinidad, Colorado,

taking White Sands assistant coach justin lowry and naming him manager lowry immediately named jd assistant coach drody always loved colorado from his air force days in the middle of the 2012 season jd took over as interim manager duties from lowry when lowry was removed from the team jd maybe somebody was writing a book about the team and they had some differences in opinion jd then moved to colorado springs colorado and was named manager for the 2013 season jd led the triggers to the playoffs in 2013 and ran a very structured program editorializing in the story a little bit yeah in 2012 a reality tv show shot pilot footage of the pecos league in hopes of creating a show that followed one of the teams the show launched

and trinidad was the team selected jd and Triggers, JD and the Triggers, I guess, were followed by a camera crew for all 70 games. And finally, quote, I got used to having a microphone every day. I believe the production crew did it right. Six months from now, the Triggers will be a household name. Wrong.

And I am glad to be a part of it. I have done a lot of things in my life and I have enjoyed my time with the Triggers. That quote is not attributed to anyone. I'm going to assume it is from J.D. Droty. I understand now why there is no byline on this article. It's not edited. However, unbelievable biography for this current manager of maybe the worst baseball team in the world relative to its league.

team in the world relative to its league but jd drody phd harvard law graduate combat veteran play writer and baseball manager this story is incredible i'm i'm booking my tickets for selena i gotta go i gotta see this team well there's a problem not in selena i gotta go wherever the stockade currently are. Yeah. This is amazing. I mean, you've already written one book about the independent leagues, but here's another one just begging to be written. If only I had known at the beginning of the season that this was happening. But, man, got to get a story out of this.

This is something. Apparently, the top employer in Salina, Kansas, according to the 2014 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report of Salina, Kansas, is Tony's Pizza. With 2,000 employees, Tony's Pizza is a pizza company that is based in Marshall, Minnesota, yet somehow is also the top employer in Salina, Kansas. I want to know about that too. But hopefully I'll find out when and if I go to Salina, which I might not need to do because the baseball team is not actually there.

Yeah, I guess also you might not need to write the book about J.D. Droney because it sounds like he's perfectly qualified to write a book about himself. Or a play, probably. Or a play, yeah.

All right. Well, we will end this excellent and strange episode here. Except to say that since this turned into an IndieBall-themed episode, we should also salute Stacey Piagno, who on Saturday, while that wild Winnipeg Gold Eyes game was going on,

earned the first win of her professional career, starting for the Sonoma Stompers and beating the Pittsburgh Diamonds, a good-hitting team this year. I know, I know, I'm citing a pitcher win, but the point is Stacey went seven innings, allowed only one run on four hits, very impressive performance, struck out three, according to the stompers press release became the third woman to earn a win in an american men's professional baseball league since the 1950s

so congrats to stacy and congrats to the stompers indie ball is the best you can support the podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Nikolai Stahlgaard-Eriksson, Cameron Gunn, Adam Wallace, Ricky Skricka, and Jonah Bernhard. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild, and you can rate and review

and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Michael and I have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up. Among other things, we talked to Charles Learson, the author of a great Ty Cobb biography from a couple years ago. Ty Cobb is back in the news because of the new White House special counsel named Ty Cobb. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions and falsehoods about Ty Cobb that Learson has exposed. So we had him on to explain why Ty Cobb wasn't such a bad guy.

Some of the things you've heard about him are not true. So I encourage everyone to go check that out on the Ringer MLB show feed. And please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fan graphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will talk to you soon. I believe in the unbelievable experience. I believe in the unbelievable experience. I believe in the unbelievable experience.