Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1093: Live at the Bell House With Fernando Perez

Episode Date: August 8, 2017

At the Bell House in Brooklyn for a Pitch Talks event, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan talk to former major leaguer Fernando Perez about Mike Trout’s birthday pranking, the return of Carter Capps, Perez’s injury history, his late conversion to switch-hitting, what makes a pitcher deceptive, the problems with player development and batting practice, the […]

If you're high strung and stressed out, down in the dumps been turned out Stabilized, motorized, insecure, or fabulized Curious, it's yours, picked up all our peripheas Legalized, criminalized, stamp your feet, dry out your eyes If you wanna go where they chain up the sun See Fernando, see Fernando, see Fernando He'll buy a bottle of salt for you and everyone See Fernando, see Fernando Hello and welcome to episode 1093 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs

Presented by our Patreon supporters I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, about to be joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. On Monday night at the Bell House in Brooklyn, Jeff and I did a live recording of Effectively Wild as part of a Pitch Talks event. You are about to hear that conversation. We followed a few other writers and we got a great guest, Fernando Perez, the former major leaguer. We talked for quite a while, although I think we could have talked twice as long. It was a ton of fun. I enjoyed meeting and re-meeting a lot of listeners after the event.

We just do live podcasts now, back-to-back episodes. So let's get it started. Brooklyn, the Bell House, me, Jeff, Fernando Perez. Enjoy. Hi, everyone. I'm Ben. This is Jeff. Hello.

This is the 1,093rd episode of Effectively Wild, and the third that we can't edit when we make mistakes. Thank you to all of you for skipping the Bachelorette finale or postponing it. At least we appreciate it. This man sitting between us right here is Fernando Perez, who some of you may remember from his 10-year career

as a professional baseball player. I'll adult though. Maybe not, but He's done a lot of other things. It happened, I swear. It really happened. He was in the majors with the Rays in 2008-2009. He is also... Yes, right. Even at the time, yeah, and and He has written for more sites than I think that two of us combined, probably.

written for more sites than I think the two of us combined, probably. Vice and the New York Times and many other prestigious places. He is the first major leaguer published in Poetry Magazine, I believe. I don't know if there have been subsequent major... Only one that you tried. Yeah, right. What about Miguel Batista? Was that too long form? Teammate of mine for a moment. I feel like you had a lot of teammates. I have a lot of teammates.

Fernando Valenzuela was a teammate of mine. Guys, I just want to tell you this. Fernando Valenzuela was a teammate of mine. He was still trying to pitch at 49. This is difficult. This is so bright. Still trying to pitch at 49 in the Mexican Professional League. Thank you.

We played in a fixed game together in Culiacan. I'm not kidding, I don't lie much. We played in a fixed game together. Absolutely fixed by the mafia in Culiacan. Mario Mendoza was the manager. These are all true stories. After the game, the debrief, Mario said, guys, we don't need to really talk about anything.

We know that game was fixed. The mafia is strong here. I was nearly kidnapped with Brian Stokes. These are all things that happened. And then the best part of it is walking through the airport with Fernando Valenzuela. It was just Mexican Cougar Central. I loved him. I was just walking

closer to him just to be closer. It was amazing. You were just telling us... That's my best baseball story. It's all downhill. You were just telling us a bunch of great stories that you said we couldn't discuss on the podcast, and then you come out with a fixed game story

from the start. Absolutely. You are also the first Latino Ivy Leaguer to make the majors, which is nice because everyone introduces you as an Ivy Leaguer, a guy who went to Columbia and studied creative writing, which is nice because the most obnoxious thing is when you introduce yourself as an Ivy Leaguer, but you have worked out this thing where people will just do it for you wherever you go which is great i'm vegan i went to harvard also went to harvard so we're going to talk a little bit about player development which is a

passion of fernando's we were all at sabre seminar in boston yesterday and fernando was speaking and sort of ran out of time because he had so much to say. So we said, we know another place where you could come talk about baseball. So we're all here again. But we wanted to just talk about Mike Trout for a minute because that's what we do on this podcast. And backstage, we were just watching a video posted today, which probably many of you have seen,

of Mike Trout getting pranked for his birthday, which is today. Happy birthday, Mike Trout getting pranked for his birthday, which is today. Happy birthday, Mike Trout. The big 26. And he was just getting all manner of condiments and substances dumped on him in a shower. And we were asking Fernando if that was common big league behavior. And we were, what did we identify? We found I see we found ketchup and mustard eggs It looked like just the icy syrup yes even like the icy part there was a lot of a white Probably flour, but you don't really know if it's flour

There was there was a there was creamer But like a squeak like a squirt top creamer like company was creamer coming out of a mustard container So I don't I don't even know if it was a prank because like he was yeah because so comfortable yeah it wasn't a surprise he was like he knew it was coming and he guys do the thing with all the coffee it's not even his birthday sure mike of course anything for you mike that's what we were saying because he 26, which seems like it's beyond the point at which you celebrate birthdays or at least get pranked for them.

And you said you've never seen the poor substances on a player for his birthday tradition? Not for a player that's maybe the best of his generation that's not a rookie anymore. I do have video of Carlos Silva abusing Fukudome's trainer in the same way, but that made more sense.

You know, so baseball players like the showers, man. I don't know. We also wanted to talk for a moment about Carter Capps, another popular podcast topic, because he was called back up today after an absence of a couple years

and he has had I think 17 of his last 18 appearances were scoreless and we've been watching him with interest because we are curious about whether other people will copy him and whether it's an available thing we can't actually see any of you but I know that at a live podcast it's probably a good idea to involve the crowd so can we get a show of hands? How many of you think Carter Capps is an innovator and he's creative and he is taking advantage of the rules and we should praise him for his crazy hop-step delivery?

All right. All right. And how many think he is a terrible cheater who is exploiting the rules and breaking baseball and he should be banned? Seems about even actually. Yeah, it could be both. I hope that it starts to inspire more kids who realize that they can only throw 88 or something like that, which is still, I mean, I can't even throw 88 and never could.

I hope it just inspires more of them to try something strange to see. Well, that's the trouble of it because he has the most added effective velocity to his fastball because, what was he adding, three or four miles per hour? But he's also throwing 98 miles per hour, so he didn't need the advantage. He didn't need anything. But he's back. He's back and he's going to have ample opportunity to pitch in San Diego. He's probably going to start and finish games.

Yeah. What would you think if you faced Carter Capps or someone with a Carter Capps-like motion? I would complain a lot to the umpires. Depends. You know, early in my career when I was young before I was injured when I got injured I kind of lost my way I started to just notice too much I'd be standing in center field and I would just notice things that I had never noticed before dynamics in the stands all sorts

of things and it's and I was also just a lot more was like friendlier to everybody on the field definitely engaging in more conversations with umpires and people at second base should, if I ever made it to second base, I didn't make it much to second base. And it would have been a thing where I would have had a very like Pedro Serrano conversation with the catcher. It's like, wow, that's incredible stuff, man.

But I think, you know, the early, still competitive me would have been annoyed and would have complained, probably. Yeah, right. That's fair. You just mentioned the injuries. I wanted to ask you about the injuries, because we just passed the Museum of Morbid Anatomy as we were walking by here, and I was thinking thinking there's probably a piece of Fernando in there somewhere because You've had a lot of injuries. I don't know. I guess showing us scars would probably not translate on the podcast

It was in spring training It's just so dumb when I think about it now. I have goosebumps actually Here it was just dumb I dove in spring training Maybe you shouldn't even be diving in games, right? If we do a cost-benefit analysis of something like that. I dove in spring training. I stood up. My wrist did not work anymore. It looked like an ankle. And Joe Madden, and I'll never forget this one, Joe Madden and Andrew Friedman, they came, I was laying on the training table and they looked at it and so the adrenaline is just coursing through my body

and I don't really feel any pain. So I'm playing with my new ankle on my arm. And I'm just, I'm like, whoa. And Joe and Andrew saw this and were like, oh. And like they tried to say something like, oh, you'll be ready. Joe said something like, you'll be ready at the right time. I was like, no, I won't. Look at this thing.

I'm never playing again. But injuries are very difficult. Aside from the jokes, what I will say is that many baseball players are very, very proud. And they won't admit to them. They have reasons to do this because of contracts and things like that. You don't want to talk about, you know, you don't want to say the truth and you guys are truth seekers. And if you came to talk to me and, you know, for instance, I know a player, I don't want to say his name, but a player that had a shoulder surgery and he couldn't lift his arm over his head, like very high at all. Like

his fist, if you could imagine his fist going over his head, it went like a foot over his head like very high at all like his fist if you could imagine his fist going over his head it went like a foot over his head and that was absolutely affecting him and when you have an injury it's sort of like having new hardware um and it's very very difficult to do you have to relearn things and and again you know the, best, best players find a way. Also, the best, best, best players tend to not get hurt that much as well, maybe. But, you know, a lot of guys will find a way, and other guys won't. They'll always be trying to do the same swing and get things done in the same way. So it really makes an impact.

And a lot of times when I'm looking at the way that we're talking about certain players it's you know it's just like well the guy his elbow hurts it's like very very clear when it comes to a guy like Pineda you know or he's like oh Pineda just can't find that command he's just such a frustrating player he needs to focus more it's like his elbow really hurts and his elbow really hurts and when your elbow really hurts you know you can throw that 94 but you don't really know where it's going you'll see the thing that players do is they'll throw and do like this one you know it's a little different it's not like guys that aren't hurt they won't show that there are little small tells that guys who have ever thrown a baseball with pain will know. Baseball prospectus out there Russell Carlton has done a lot of

research on the grind, the effect of the season wearing on, but in your experience playing throughout the season, what's sort of like the state of, I guess, the average player when it comes to be August, you know, post-trade deadline, it's the middle of August, you're getting into September, you know, you figured everyone is playing through something, but how much should we know, I guess, about the state of the average player's health by then? What we saw at Saber Seminar, I don't know if this is already famous on fan graphs or whatever, that little graph about the catchers was incredible.

Just how catchers, they just go on a steady decline from opening day, and then the break comes. Right, the all-star break and then there's a... Yeah, that was amazing. The other thing I mentioned that I thought, you know, is a thing that we could reconsider, you know, when I first went to spring training and I was talking to lots of different folks, so Zimmer was always around at spring training and he would talk to you.

I don't know if he just thought that I was BJ or something, but he would talk to anybody. And we hung out a lot. he would talk to you. I don't know if he just thought that I was BJ or something, but he would talk to anybody. And we hung out a lot. I got another story about that, about people thinking I was BJ. Maybe for later. So, you know, he would tell me, he's like, you know, guys, we would come to spring training, and that was the first time that you saw your glove. And you're like, oh, man, the equipment manager, like, you know, he put it on the bottom or something.

And now guys are showing up. I mean, I was showing up to spring training in the best shape of my life every single year. I showed up at spring training one year at like 205. I mean, I was lifting everything and eating everything. I was ready. Like if the season started on that day, I was going to be at my best. So that is maybe not smart. One of the things that I talked about a lot is finding ways to protect players from themselves. It's hard to do, but if you can think that way,

I think it's very valuable. I think that maybe peaking in spring training is possibly not smart considering that guys will play 30 games in spring training that don't go on the books, another 160, and then they might go play in the World Series or Winter Ball. I played like 230 or 240 games one year. Yeah. So when you have a series of injuries like you had, you had your wrist, ankle, your had your shoulder you had your knee no no knees no knee and I mean I sprayed my MCL but it's like and that's horrible but it's like compared to the other things yeah I checked your records don't question me on your injury history

Thank you. So about that. So the first time that I met this guy, that's just like a great story. I was casually talking about places that I like to hit and that's a thing when you're hanging out with like sharp baseball people like they check, they verify. So he's so I casually said I'm like, ah Durham's a bad place to hit. He was like, doop, doop, doop. He's like, indeed, Durham isn't bad. He's like, where else do you think it's bad to hit?

I was like, I don't know, Toledo, and I'm seeing him underneath the table on his phone. Yes, you're right. I have sprained my ankle so many times that it's still swollen. So when that happens a bunch of times, do you start thinking, I'm injury prone? I'm an injury prone player? Or do you just keep telling yourself that was a one-time thing? That was a freak occurrence? Do you change your behavior because of it? Maybe this is obvious, but there are some guys that are...

To me, injury prone is a matter of lacking some grace, as weird as that sounds. I think there are some people that they lack some grace, and they're in some scenarios that are they get themselves into just bad body positions. They don't have body control. And then some people, you see them, like they'll do awful looking things,

and they'll always be fine. But then there's like the Derrick Rose sort of scenario where that is a very graceful athlete, and he seems'll always be fine. But then there's the Derrick Rose sort of scenario where that is a very graceful athlete, and he seems to always get hurt. And I think that he's always getting hurt because he's just going so hard and being so inventive that I think a lot of times defenders are going for all of his fakes, and he just gets himself in the bad position.

So if there's any nuance to it, I think that there are some injury prone guys that they're just you know maybe not they don't have that extra level of elegance in their movement and they put themselves in bad positions I don't think it was really that for me I mean the wrist thing was a freak thing but I really do blame myself in that it was like kind of a lapse I had a chip on my shoulder because I missed the very first play of the game was a ball over my head, the Willie Mays catch, which is now routine. I didn't make it, kind of beating myself up.

I wanted to kind of make it up to all the senior citizens there in Port Charlotte. And I went too hard. And it's just something that like looking back, it's like, what were you doing? All those senior citizens like don't care that much. They want you to be on the team. And sure enough, I did it.

So as the injuries started to mount, and you sort of had your big break. You achieved some fame in 2008 with the Rays. You scored a big run. And then in 2009, you get hurt. The injuries are mounting. You end up with the Cubs, and you're in the minor leagues. and at some point you play for Gary Gaiety, you wound up in independent ball, you played for Gary Gaiety, and then you wound up with another independent

league team. What... Butch Hobson. Butch Hobson. I played for Butch Hobson. As they're mounting, and you continue to play, are you feeling like you're going to be able to get past them, that you're going to be able to get back to some approximation of 100 what's what's driving you at that point as you can kind of tell that you're starting to drift a little

further away uh to be honest with you uh so two things um major league baseball players and and professional athletes they're all a little bit crazy. There's a certain level of grandiosity that makes you believe that you can do some of these things. And so then even when you're in the hole and you're injured and you think you're going to make a comeback, like some of these guys, I know sometimes we think, oh, this guy thinks he's going to make a comeback. He's doing it for the publicity. He might really think he can come back. Because it's just this thing,

this, I don't know, it's silly in a lot of other walks of life, but a lot of other people have it. It's not only athletes, you know, writers have it, actors have it, and it can ruin your life. And it can totally ruin your life. It can totally ruin your life. It can totally ruin your life. Also, too, I hated civilian life in my first little go of it. I was like, this is bad. I want to go back to playing baseball.

There I was, back in the tights and the cleats and everything, and they didn't let me stay much longer. We don't have to do anything for Port Charlotte senior citizens. and everything and they didn't let me stay much longer. They were... We don't have to do anything for Port Charlotte senior citizens. It's like Shawshank, you got let out, you wanted to go back in. I want, yeah.

No, it's, there's some truth to that. So by that time you were a switch hitter, you were not a switch hitter when you started and we heard you tell this story yesterday. So for the benefit of all these people who, as far as we know, may very well have all been in Boston this weekend and come back down here with us. But tell us the story of how you got into organized baseball and began hitting left-handed. I was really fast. I ran a 6.260. It's very fast. And a man named Bart Braun, he comes up to me at the pre-draft workout in Tampa Bay,

and he says, I'm going to make you a switch hitter. I'm like, that sounds crazy. But, you know, look, I'm going to be honest. Raise your hand and tell me the truth now. Who here is afraid of the ball? Yeah, it's scary. I'm not going to lie to you guys. I've been afraid of the ball my whole life, but then I got over it. I got over it. So for me, I was like, you know, hitting lefty, like guys are throwing hard. I don't want to miss Christmas over this baseball. How did you get over it?

Did you just have people pelt you with baseballs? How I got over it? Exposure therapy? That's a good question. How I got over it. Just more baseball. Like for me, I liked baseball because my friends played baseball. I liked baseball because my friends played baseball. I liked baseball

because I liked pitching. Pitching is the greatest thing that you can do with your time. And then I just wasn't good enough to keep pitching. So I had to play the field. This is true. And then I just was no longer allowed to pitch. And how I got over it is just more baseball. That's literally all. When it was just the seasonal thing that I did, I just remember, like, oh, this is comfortable. This experience is comfortable because that guy's throwing 80 miles an hour.

It's like all of a sudden we're facing a pitcher throwing 92. I'm like, this game sucks. This is the worst game I've ever seen. I wish I had a wrist ankle so I didn't have to keep playing this game. It's like, this game is terrible. But then once I was playing more and more and more, I just sort of got used to it.

And a lot of it is just like meeting the intensity with intensity. Mookie Betts, my favorite player on the planet, notice a thing about Mookie Betts. Yes! Notice a thing about Mookie Betts. He curls that upper lip like he smells something bad when he's hitting and he does that because it is you have to match the intensity with the intensity

it's like a little bit of both because you also have to relax and not get too crazy but he's you know it's it is it's a fight and I think a lot of it for me was like okay like I have to just get intense and there's like levels to it but eventually I got over it but afraid of the slider or not uh it's effective so I thought in any event I just thought that the the journey of trying to switch it would just be so interesting and bizarre and at the time that I was that I signed there were just so many good outfielders ahead of me Delman Young um Rocco Baldelli was a starting center fielder. Carl was over there, of course.

Elijah Dukes, I already said Delman Young. BJ hadn't even moved to the outfield yet. Jason Pridey was ahead of me. I wasn't really going anywhere. So they let me hit as a right-hander my first year in the Midwest League. I did well. And then there was this whole, from then then on started this like, there was distinctly two camps. Camp, he should not hit left-handed. Camp, let him try it. It was always about

50-50. With friends in my ear, you should never do it. Evan Longoria was like, you should not hit lefty ever again. Other people would see me playing games like, oh, you're a great left-handed hitter. I was not great. Well, you were the first year, I think it was the first year, that you were trying to switch it. You said you were in the Cal League, but you batted three-something. You had an OBP over 400. You slugged almost 500.

I know this is the Cal League, so you adjust those, and that's like pitcher level. But still, you look at those numbers, and you see them on the scoreboard. You see them on your, I don't know, Cal League, so you adjust those and that's like pitcher level. But still, you look at those numbers and you see them on the scoreboard, you see them on your, I don't know, Cal League baseball card. Maybe you exchanged a few amongst yourselves. Nobody has those. Maybe with those numbers, did you ever start to think, this is my first year batting left-handed and I just did that?

Like, did it kind of get to your head a little bit? Like maybe this is easier than I thought? No. No. kind of get to your head a little bit like maybe this is easier than I thought? No, no. No, I knew, I mean because I was there doing it and I knew a lot of it was, I mean I was getting a lot of infield hits but I was learning things. But one thing though, you know, I took my first swing left-handed when I was like 23 or 24. So it's probably like the latest anybody's ever done it. And so there's a swing. I mentioned this at the Sabre seminar. There's a swing that my coach has, Steve Livesey,

hitting coach. He lost the hard drive, but I actually made contact with the ball with my left, with my right foot in the air. So you can imagine that, right? So this is the one maybe that comes up. I made contact with the ball. He has a photo of this. I've made contact and this ball, this foot is in the air. You shouldn't be able to do that. So basically, my body was making it happen, but my body was not prepared to make it happen. I would do the silliest things. I actually fouled off a ball and threw the bat several times just strange things that I would that I would do um and so I just like I made it work but as you know we said the next year was another great year but then in AAA I just was not good and I struck out so much and Gary Gaiety would just like make fun of me.

Gary's a guy who like everything was just easy for him and you know he's just like what are you gonna do? You strike out almost every time you're up there. I was like Gary I don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna do. That's your job right? You're supposed to tell me what to do. It just was you know you tell me what to do. It just was, you know, you tell me what to do.

You know, I tried everything. So we don't really have the answers there. I think biomechanically, my body just did not want to swing left-handed. It had to do too many weird and bad things. Now, without an injury, am I like two years from figuring it out? I don't know. Maybe I get into Pilates or realize that like I should be, I should not go play in Mexico and hang out with Fernando Valenzuela.

I should go do Pilates for the whole off season. I mean, nobody really had any of these answers and I certainly didn't, but then, you know, I got injured. And then the situation just became far more complicated because it hurt to hold the bat, and I think it hurt less when I swung right-handed, but it hurt. It was all confusing.

I tried different things. Sometimes I would just go up there right-handed. I mean, it was just very confusing after injury. So what are some of the mistakes in retrospect? Obviously, this is not a widespread problem that teams are making all their players learn switch hitting at 23. But what are some of the more systematic issues that you perceive now with some time out of the game

looking back at the way this is structured? Because we don't have a way to evaluate this stuff. You were just talking about how we can look up everything and player development's like the one thing that we can't look up And so maybe that has made it easier for these sort of backwards ideas to persist because you can't just look up the you know Winds above replacement of a player development tactic basically. Yeah, I mean the only preparation that I had for hitting left-handed was uh throwing me into games excuse me and then for one year before i did it i would hit off the tee occasionally and then they gave me a hammer and i did this one bizarre exercise with a hammer, with a heavy hammer. That was it. So apart from the weird switch hitting thing, because the switch hitting thing is weird. If you

can't tell, it's still confusing to me. Weekly when I cry and put on my baseball uniform, I'm still unsure of what I should have done. I still don't know. But in player development in general, there's a lot of fat to trim for sure. And there isn't much experimentation. My whole point when I was at the Saber seminar was to say that we're spending a lot of energy parsing players and that's really fun. Fantasy is kind of connected to it. I mean, I think that there's a really fascinating pastime of trying to do that. But when it comes to teams, they're sort of doing the same. They pay a lot of people to scout to find out, you know, instead of developing players that we have, we're looking for players on other teams that they don't value. And that's important, but there isn't much teaching of the game. And I learn things.

It's not to say that I didn't learn things, but there isn't much of a, there aren't many methods. Now, baseball, a lot of the skills I think really are intuitive and there is this idea that you need to just go do it and you learn through it. However, there is a lot of knowledge and there are a lot of things that overlap, things that are actually afraid to put hands on players. And there's a couple, you know, things contributing to this. Millennium players that don't want to be told anything. And you've always had millennium type players who are just like, you know, I got here for a reason. You know, like you coach, like you don't know what you're talking about. So there's a little bit of that.

you coach, like you don't know what you're talking about. So there's a little bit of that. But also coaches, I know for sure that many coaches are afraid to be too sure about something and to really impose something because if it goes wrong, the player will kind of like say, like it was you, you messed me up. And that's actually, if that seems obscure, it really isn't. It's a thing that you hear quite a bit so I just think that teams really should work to to like define methods more clearly I mean even the outfield playing the outfield like nobody you would think that somebody just tells you like this is what you're supposed to do this is what you're supposed to look for but I was like learning things very very late

I remember one thing a coach said to me he He said, you know, you have to get ready like a tennis player. I said, but tennis players don't have to go back. And he's like. I don't know. So, there are a lot. It's a true story. It's true. You know, there are a lot of things. You pick things up, but there's just, I don't know, we're a little bit sheepish in it. And I'm unsure why, but it was like the question

that I was trying to ask. Like why, if I'm talking to player development people, why is this? So we're afraid to give answers because we're not sure of them. There are a lot of ways to skin the cat. You see all these batting stances that work, and that's actually a good example.

All these batting stances work, yet if you take a photo when the pitcher's about to release the ball, everybody's in the same basic position. That's a thing that they will teach guys. That's a thing I learned, a thing that the hitting coach taught us, and that's good. There are more of those things to teach. So along the lines of things that we can't really measure

We can't really measure player development. There is a presentation at Sabre seminar that was talking about a concept called pitch tunneling I'm not going to go into detail. I can't go into detail, but yeah One of the things we know we can't really measure at the major league level is is the concept of what makes a pitcher deceptive I mean we know with Carter caps makes a pitcher deceptive. I mean, we know with Carter Capps he's deceptive because he's throwing the ball from 15 feet away, but with the average pitcher, you know, if you have... You've seen pitchers from the batter's box, I've seen simulations of pitchers from the batter's box.

It's not the same. So if you... I don't know, if you have two pitchers in your head where you can think they were throwing the same stuff but one of them just made it look a lot more different? What are the qualities that we're missing that make a pitcher actually deceptive to a hitter? asses and elbows You ever heard of this whole thing? It's really a thing if you imagine like looking out at a pitcher

Imagine him like doing like all sorts of weird shit. Is he throwing up? Is it karate? Whatever, imagine him doing all of that before throwing the ball. That's better than the whole very simple gather, simple, simple gather, okay, here, time to throw. And a good example of this, I think, like the very simple gather, simple, simple gather. Okay, your time to throw.

And a good example of this, I think, and I've said this over and over, and maybe you guys care and think it's interesting. David Price. When David Price started, this was a lot more like Chris Sale if we remember visually what this looked like. It was herky-jerky. He didn't have the command necessarily, but he had stuff, right? Now, fast forward a little while, right? The thing that we tell everyone is,

we tell pitchers it's so important, is fastball command. So I don't know if somebody got into his ear. I don't know. I haven't talked to him in a while. But I feel as though he was trying to address fastball command and he simplified his delivery, but he made himself less deceptive. Now his elbow also hurts. And that's, you know, it's very clear. He's on the DL, right? Okay, so his elbow hurts. So I don't really know, I don't really know what's going on with him, but I know for sure that that really simplifies things.

But there's Catch-22 involved. If you simplify your delivery, you should be able to pitch tunnel better. So it's very difficult, but I know for sure, seeing him, I mean, I remember I faced him, I think, in a sim game or something like that, and there's a little bit moving here a little bit moving there It's and then also You know that just the intimidation factor seeing like a pitcher who's just like kind of just like all over the place It's a little bit different of an experience and you know like little things matter if it if it affects, you know

30 more batters a year. I mean that that is effective so deception I just think, you know, clearly if you're going to be in the lower end of stuff, it's something that you want to be working on for sure. So if you were coaching a developing pitcher, your advice would be to be Chris Sale. To be Chris Sale, yeah. Yeah, totally. Be that guy. Try switch pitching, maybe. That works, too.

Just pitch more like Chris Sale. It's easy. Someone should give me a job. What if it works? Would you want a job like this? You wouldn't, right? If someone came to you and said you are the new Gabe Kapler, your player development director,

you can implement whatever policies you want, is that something you would aspire to? Yes, but not in the form that it is. You know, playing baseball is quite a commitment. There's many days. I was very surprised to hear that to work in baseball is even more commitment. If you ask them when their down month is, they say August. That's in the season. A Phileas guy actually told me that it's October. No, I really do want to work in baseball.

I don't know if this year is the year. Maybe next year or something. But you know, that's boring stuff, like personal kind of matters and stuff. I really do want to work for a team. There's just so many different things, you know, like cities and things like that. I have no allegiance to a team because they don't have any allegiance to me. So I don't have any allegiance to a team. Like kind of like I do still root for the Rays. They're very easy to root for, you know.

But you know, they dumped me. Okay, so at Saber seminar you had a whole wonderful presentation, but there was a little aside where he said, I have this whole thing about batting practice. I don't want to get into it right now. You can get into it right now. I don't, ugh. Batting practice.

I mean, come on. Batting practice. Look, hitting. Your nervous system is engaged. This is difficult. You know, you may be hitting a fastball. You may be hitting a curveball. I broke hitting down if we need to break it down, which we're going to just break it down quickly. There's fastball hunting, and then there's the more improvisational

skill of hitting. Basically, every big leaguer can fastball hunt well, some better than others, right? Some of them, you could say like a Miguel Cabrera, if he's fastball hunt well, some better than others, right? Some of them, you could say like a Miguel Cabrera, if he's fastball hunting, he could hit more fastballs like in the general zone and even some out of them than some other players that really, you know, a 97 mile an hour fastball, they need to pick either like in or out or they're not going to really hit it. But in the second form of hitting, like that's where the money is. That's where you separate your 230 guys from your 300 guys. And that improvisational skill of hitting,

there's literally no practice of that during the day. So to play devil's advocate, what's wrong with sim games? Guys can get hurt, different things like that. But even in the drill work, there's nothing really addressing timing. Now, in the margins, there are different coaches of different teams that have innovated ways to simulate,

say, fastball change-up. And that's really valuable, because you're actually practicing being ready for two things. And that's most of the experience of hitting. But it's not happening across the board it's just here and there where there's a there's a hitter a great hitter who's like hey let's do the fastball change drill and he does it with one hitter than the other guys just like no no just give me normal flips I'm just like trying to feel good here so

other things about baseball players right here like you, somebody proposes something and somebody's like, baseball players, we're creatures of habit. So if you're a creature of habit, you're also going to be a creature of bad habits. The T is another thing that we talked about a little bit. There's a little anecdote from, I worked in the Major League Baseball's academies overseas, which is really amazing work that's generally underfunded, and I have not been invited to go back after. Everybody got fired, one of those things.

You ever been in a situation where you got a cool thing going, and then everybody gets fired, and nobody's the next? The yes came so fast. The yes came so fast. Oh, I felt the pain. I was with R Rembert and everyone. Yeah, so haven't got a chance to do it again, but, you know, there's a guy, a biomechanical dude, his name is Franz Bosch,

and he sees the T, and he's just like, the T is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Now, a lot of people out there, some, you know, very famous baseball players, really took offense to this. So I equated it to this, to play devil's advocate, and they weren't really interested. When it comes to talking about baseball,

we talked about this in terms of broadcasting. Service time is a thing. I've been on MLB Network here and there, but I don't have as much service time as... I'm way under the bar of service time. So I'm not necessarily there. So when we're talking about, let's say, we're talking about player development stuff and we're talking about swings, imagine if there was a round table of players.

Invariably, a lot of guys would have much more experience than I would, and so I would like probably not say as much. But there are some incredible players, and I've met many incredible players that I don't think they have any clue how they got their hits. And also, I think that there are many players, I think it's very valuable if you're able to explain your own experience doing things. And some people are just better explaining things than others. So I equated the tea to this.

If you were the greatest baseball player of all time, and before every game you drank three, four locos, and you still hit 300 every year, I might try to argue that if you didn't have those three, four locos, that you might be a better player. Like you're still a great player drinking the four locos. That's the tea. Maybe. Okay. Now, why this is the tea? So again, let's see for eyes sake. Let's think of Lucas Duda's swing. When Lucas Duda gets ready, right, that bat, it takes a little bit of time to get into that set position. And so that's something when you're working on the tee that's forgiven. There's nothing that's actually making you get the bat into that set position quicker to actually do

your swing. So I don't know how Lucas Duda trains but it's a thing I know for sure once I was paying attention to this and still training a little bit I realized if I was working on the tee you can be forgiven for not really getting ready and not having the bat into that in that set position. And so if you're doing a lot of training where the ball isn't moving and you can really get away with a lot of things, when the ball is actually moving, you can't get away with those things. So I'm really intrigued by the whole argument against the tee.

If you're always hitting moving balls, what is the real value of hitting stationary balls? Not to say you can't work on things hitting stationary balls. You absolutely can, but you can also work on those things with a moving ball. So batting practice is like a, it's like the same principle, essentially. It's that, you know, you're hitting 40 mile per hour or 50 or 60 mile per hour balls from like halfway. It's really easy and you're just getting used to doing something really, really easy. What you're just getting used to doing something really, really easy. What would a player that loves BP say?

He'd say, well, you know, you're just warming up. There are other ways to warm up. They're less time consuming. Maybe you could warm up in ways that are actually better for you. I talked to a bunch of players. Now that a lot of players are actually bucking it now, I mean, it would have been unheard of 10 years ago.

Guys didn't like it and were sort of thinking, like, what are we even doing this for? But nobody was going to challenge it. But now you have players that weren't doing it. Like Bryce Harper was like, I'm just not doing this. This is dumb. And then I talked to a lot of players last year who were just like, it's just fun for me

because I don't play much. That's what... Jose Lobaton told me. He's like, Papi, I hear you, but I don't play very much. This is my fun time. As he said that,

he strapped up his bat and gloves and ran out to go hit. But yeah, I think it's all about simulation. It's a horrible simulation and it might actually be there might be adverse effects.

I truly think that there are now. Now that I think about it. So you were just bringing up the being on MLB Network and you've done stuff for Vice and it's interesting that there's this hierarchy among even ex-players because when Jeff or I will will go on those shows it's like we're in the chair of the unathletic person and we're sitting next to the athletic

person who talks about being an athletic person but even in the athletic person chair there's this divide between like the best athletic person and the really pretty athletic person. So we were talking recently about how now you see players not really feeling that traditional kind of, this is what I did when I played, and they say the same sort of thing, and you get put in these boxes where I'm supposed to say the nerdy thing, and then the player's supposed to say the anti-nerdy thing, and we're supposed to good-naturedly rib each other for a bit and then we get to the commercial. And that has, mold has been broken a little bit. At least there are players like you who come on and don't say the

standard thing that players have been saying on air for decades. And you were even telling me that some guys are getting ambitions maybe to be the newsbreaker. You can be the former player, but also you have connections in the game. You can take that John Heyman chair and fill both chairs maybe. So how has that evolved? What is the competition like among former players? Because you must be talking to other guys who are trying to get on-air roles. What are people looking for and what's the inside track? I don't know what they're looking for. I try, I show up, they say that I do an okay job but that's what you say to people when you want them to leave anyway.

So I don't really know. To say, you know, I think it is maybe a design flaw of some of the shows maybe, that maybe maybe the show needs... The shows need to evolve a little bit to kind of... I think the smartest show right now would be one where we just finally get down to this whole thing. Effectively wild. Effectively wild, right?

The people that haven't played the game, they think they know some things, and they know some things, for sure. And then the guys who played the game, they definitely think they know things, and they know some things. Both sides have been arrogant in history. I would say the players have been a little bit more arrogant,

but now the writer-analyst types are maybe making up some ground. Catching up. Catching up. And that has been a really interesting discourse over the last 15 years when it was first on the scene. Both sides have made mistakes. Both sides are still quite suspicious of the other, I think.

But when you actually get down to it and start to talk through these things, it gets really interesting. Some of the conversations that I'd start with Mike Petriello on that show that we did called MLB Plus was so much fun. And I would always joke with him, I was like, we need to be more like Stephen A. and Skip. Like just as a joke. And there is that show. I think that there was a show that was kind of like that. But I think that that's really interesting. I also would love to see programming

just get a little bit more instructive. The MLB Network does some of that a little bit. But there's a huge market for that because obviously everybody's trying to make their kid Jeter, as evidenced by all of the explosion of youth sports everywhere. So those are some ways that I'd love to see things go. But just to have those conversations,

because what tends to happen is not necessarily on the air, but sometimes in the production meetings, it gets kind of one-sided and it makes sense You know obviously the players when the analytics people were coming coming into the fold the players were very suspicious They were very territorial and as soon as it was basically like Like being a woman in the workplace I've never been in a woman in the workplace But I've read enough stories about that where you make one mistake and

everybody thinks that you're some sort of idiot. Well, the same thing was happening with the analytics people showing up on the scene. They make a mistake and it's just like, oh, you guys are worthless. It's very, very, it's clearly untrue. The players in the old guard have been making

tons and tons and tons of mistakes. So, wherever, you know So any ways to drive that dialogue is really interesting. It's very clear from the analytic side that there is a desire to humanize some of that stuff. And to give it some personality. But actually to maybe give it... I think actually the numbers are often quite elegant. And the writing is always good. I think it actually, it's like the numbers are often quite elegant and the writing is always good. I think it has personality, but to actually bring it to the field and actually like

talk about the applications, like that would be really interesting. A lot of times when I've read stuff that some of you guys have done, I'm there thinking, you know, I would love to see like a video demonstration of like what this would look like, even if it's just in a cage. Now, that stuff costs money, but I'm pretty free right now. Well, when you were playing,

were you hesitant to show all of these sides of yourself? Because you were just talking about how in player development, there's this hesitancy to think about doing things differently and you look back at you during your minor league career and it's like is that Fernando because you had this like short hair and clean shaven and I wonder whether you were trying to conform to what people think a baseball player should look like or act

like or talk like like you were writing all the time. Did you do that around the team? Did you hide that from the team? Did you not want to be the Columbia creative writing type? Both. I actually, for the last almost 20 years of my life, I let my hair grow long, then I shave it all off. So sometimes I will look like a Duke point guard, and other times, I'm like, you know, poor man's Ricky Williams, either or. As a result, I'm treated differently.

There's, you know, pros and cons to each. When I played, here's the thing. When you are balling, you're just eccentric. When you're not, you're a weirdo. And when I got traded to the Cubs, there was a lot of like, why? Who is this guy? There was a lot of that, for sure. Now, when it comes to the culture, there's definitely I've always, I think because of baseball and because of a lot of

the structures that I've been through and just being me, a non-white person, that I've definitely always known how to code switch to CIA level code switching. Not only that, but I've always been very private with a lot of things, knowing that's not for you. You don't want to see this, kinds of things, especially in the locker room and stuff. But yeah, I guess that answers it best. But I think it's sort of going back to what we were talking about before.

I'm interested in a lot of the experimentation that a lot of people want to do because right now um and i think in a large part because of the influence of like you know people like you guys and a lot of the people that are like assuming also their writers out there and people like you know dan o'krent started rotisserie baseball because he was looking at moves that the owners were making was just like i can make a better move than that and, you know, Dan Okrent started rotisserie baseball because he was looking at moves that the owners were making. He was just like, I can make a better move than that. And, you know, and fantasy has become this large thing where, you know, he says that he feels like Dr. Frankenstein, like he's created this like monstrosity of a thing that's just like out of control.

But that energy has certainly pushed baseball. Now, whether baseball would have moved and evolved anyway, I'm sure it would have, but in any event, baseball has changed in large part because of influence of you guys. And now that we're at that point, I think that we need to do a lot of finishing of the job. As I mentioned before at the Saber seminar,

baseball's thinking at the outer regions of the box. Thinking outside of the box is not really their thing, but part of that is because the culture is so strong and so 85. And so if the culture is not ready for outside of the box types of things, especially when it comes to implementation. So let's you know one of the things that I'm doing right now that I've been working on for about a year and a half is consulting with different people and really trying to develop a methodology for almost everything in baseball a lot of it is you know non sports specific training a lot of it is mental training so just let's say that I developed something which you know I've talked to some folks that have worked with soldiers that have worked

you know that fought in wars so let's say that I developed something that was a great method for the on deck circle implementing that is going to be very very hard it's going to be very very hard so there are there are ways to get around it. There are some players that are receptive, more receptive than others. I know for me, if you come up to me with a men who stare at goats kind of thing when I'm in AA, I'm with it. I'm there.

And there are other guys that would be. Not every baseball player is that, the varsity blues football guy. Not everyone is that there are some like super interesting super talented strange eccentric people as well and there's uh in large part because of you know communities like these there's like a thirst for um the next thing and to just try to you know get an edge so that is my interest. I've been kind of working on trying to develop some of these methodologies.

One of the angles we probably don't talk about enough, but as players are rising through a system, the upper levels, and especially the major leagues, end up sort of this psychological experiment where they're selecting for these traits in people that are not necessarily

normal traits that you see in the in the regular population and we got an email to the podcast earlier today uh that referred to uh to something written by david foster wallace i think it was something something something my life i don't remember what it was called and uh i thought well this is going to be uh maybe more tracy austin broke my heart see i this is why I brought this up now, because I knew you'd be better for this. It's the last essay in the lobster thing. Great, well, maybe. Somebody knows it in here.

I don't even need to ask the question. You can just take it. Consider the lobster. There is a disconnect, I'm led to believe. I have not read the entry. I'm led to believe there's a disconnect that David Foster Wallace brings up where you have the reporter and the population, the media wants to know, let's take a big moment. You scored a big running game too in the playoffs. So for example, you are going to be asked probably,

maybe even still every day of your life, what is it like to score that run? What's the process of scoring that run? Whereas from the high-level elite athlete's perspective, you're sort of conditioned, you're selected to be able to shut off everything that makes that event a high-leverage situation. You just need to ignore everything so that you can just focus on executing that task. So how do you sort of, how do you, I guess, bridge that divide? How is it possible for a high level athlete to communicate what one of those moments is like? Because we see it after every game, after every event, there's just, you know, 30 seconds of wasted dialogue. It's absolutely how Tracy Austin broke my heart from Consider the Lobster. And

you're exactly right. Interesting sidebar story. After possibly the crowning moment of my athletic career, I scored the game-winning run in Game 2 of the ALCS, and I was interviewed by whoever did the broadcast, like TBS. But then after that, I was interviewed by ESPN Deportes. And my Spanish is pretty good, but when I'm excited or angry, it's bad. And so what I said to him, I said, I'm really excited.

I wanted to say, I'm really excited. Can we talk tomorrow? And I said, are we allowed to curse? Sure. I said, I'm really excited. Fuck me tomorrow so I came out on national television so it's very handsome okay where you, this is, maybe you're referring to the slide that I had that said reverse engineering success or start-up or things like that.

I like the slide that said Black Ichiro. That's all it said. The Black Ichiro project. It was promising for a while. We hit snacks. Reverse engineering stardom. This is, you know, the Tracy Austin story, this is about in this exciting moment, you're asked like, you know, how did it feel?

Or, you know, what was going through your mind? And the truth is nothing was going through your mind because in order to do it, you had to reduce the situation to basically nothing like anything. So nothing should be going through your mind. And that's why that moment is boring. So that's the essay. So what we can do, however, is that as a very smart person, you can ask me, even if I'm, you know, inarticulate or distracted or ornery, arrogant, whatever, you can ask the right questions,

and I can help you sort of picture what it is that I'm doing. And that has been one of the things that has helped me in trying to figure out what people are actually really doing. It's as simple as something like stay through the ball. I would say that a 30-year-old baseball player, right, having played like maybe eight or nine years, I'd say 50% of them get it. And you're told this the whole time, stay through it, stay through it, stay through it.

Guys have no idea what anybody's talking about. It has to be explained, you know, it's anybody's talking about. It has to be explained, you know, it's actually kind of abstract. It has to be explained well. And so, you know, when it comes to all of these tasks, they can be demystified further. And it's valuable because once you do that, you can actually communicate them to other people and have other people repeat them. And everybody's doing this privately. I mean, some of the things that I did, if I told you that I try to hit the ball at the last possible moment, that seems crazy. Well, what would you be doing?

Like, you'd be hitting foul balls. Well, I'd have to then explain to you what I really mean is that I need to hit the ball at the last possible second while still making you know putting the ball on to the field and I do that to allow me to have my hands back in case I'm fooled by an off-speed pitch so that's like no I mean I just thought of that now it's not like super elegant but it might you know just explaining it further being pushed to explain things further helps now that's often uncomfortable for athletes they're just like you know it's like i already explained it you know or sometimes they don't even want to do it because it's just easy i

just do it man i don't know you know but um so yeah i think that there's serious value in in um you know trying to to push for you know trying to get as much information as possible. I don't know if we're supposed to stop talking, probably at some point, presumably, but no one has told me not to ask one more question, so I will. You were in the Chris Archer trade, or Chris Archer was in the Fernando Perez trade. You went to the Cubs and you mentioned that they didn't really know what to do with you at the time. Yeah, what was your attitude at the time? Because you had been in the race system by that point for years. I mean were you

looking at it as a fresh start, as an opportunity, or a punishment? No, I... the business hit. Dan Feinstein called, he said, we're trading you. I was like, no, I who the business hit Dan Feinstein called he said we're trading you I was like no Yes, no It happened and when I talked to Andrew I was like Andrew. It's a good trade man He's like I know I know I only make good trades for no I know I thought I was gonna be I thought I was gonna be great you know Jim Hendry called me on the phone he's like Fernando this is your job to lose I lost the shit out of that. It's a bad time.

It's just what happened. No, I mean, that's a much longer story and a very long piece of writing that I'm almost done with. But essentially, I tried to make another diving catch, shoulder subluxed, and they, you know, this was the old Cubs. This was not good vibes, happy action, fun time, okay? This is, here's a story. So we get traded, Garza and I, and we're living together. I love this guy, Matt Garza. We're living together, and we go to practice one day. And Matt Garza is watching, like his routine is Simpsons every day.

Like in the clubhouse, he watches Simpsons every day. And then the day he pitches, he's like a different human being. And it's all West Coast hip hop and like no eye contact with anyone when he's pitching. So this is not a hip hop day. And this is the first day that like they've really seen this, that the Cubs have seen this. And the locker room is just tense. Coming from Joe's happy action fun time, I'm like, this is terrible here. You know, but like Soriano's there.

Like I had a good time. Marlon Byrd is like a hilarious character, like a cartoon character. And I had a good time. And I'm like, this place is tense. So they see Garza watching The Simpsons, and they're just losing their minds. They're just like, oh, my God, do you see what he's doing? He's watching cartoons. I'm like, he's watching cartoons.

I mean, we had, like, zoo animals in the locker room with Tampa Bay. You know what I mean? It was tough. So, you know, I got injured, and really, I shouldn't have played for like three weeks, but there was this like, oh, we got to get you back on the field kind of thing, and it was rough. It's a long story, but, you know, I'll tell it another time. But yes, there was the, I really did think that it was going to come back. I never, ever started out well, and I always, like, I played to the level of the competition,

and I would, like, figure it out toward the end of the season. I was always expecting, it was kind of, like, you know, tragic and dumb in this way, where I was, you know, at the end of my career, I was just like, oh, yeah, like, at some point, I'm just going to start, like, playing better than all the other players, and it'll be good. And it never happened, and here I am. So, yes, I did think that it was going to work out.

I saw things. I was like, yes, Carlos, me and Carlos and Matt, we're going to all do stuff for the Cubs. None of that happened until everyone was fired. Do you just want to keep doing one more until someone tells us to stop doing one more? Someone's telling us to stop doing it. Right now? That's perfect us to stop doing it now. That's perfect.

All right. Well, Fernando, you've been a great guest. You even made me tea before the podcast. You have all been great guests, even though you did not make me tea. And we will wrap up there. So you can contact us via email at any time at podcast at Fangraphs.com. We will forward your emails to Fernando. We'll mingle a bit,

but thank you all for coming. It's been fun. All right, that will do it. What you couldn't hear when I made that Grantland reference is that I was wearing my Grantland hoodie. Little did I know it would be such a perfect prop. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Nate Gilman, Victor Flores, Tom Hawk, Jason Brucks, and Matthew Charks. 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 the podcast on iTunes if you're looking for something else to listen to i also have a new episode of the ringer mlb show up you might be able to catch a snippet of jeff sullivan on that episode too but michael and i talked about the dodgers a rod's redemption and dave dambrowski and the red socks and the orioles and of course what jerry depoto did so we will be back later in the week with your regularly scheduled email and non-email episodes. Talk to you then. Fernando, Fernando Te necesitamos ahora

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