Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1112: The Insulting Infield

Episode Date: September 18, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Astros’ almost insulting infield alignment against Albert Pujols and minor league hit-by-pitch machine Nick Sinay, then welcome on MIT draftee/new Mariners front-office addition David Hesslink and, later in the episode, YouTube baseball-highlight creator Andrew Vargha, proprietor of the newly anointed official baseball YouTube account of Effectively Wild. […]

I'm deep in, deep in, deep in the hole. Deep in, deep in, deep in the hole. I'm down in, down in, down in the hole. But I'm deep in, deep in, deep in the hole. Hello and welcome to episode 1112 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hi. We are pre-recording this episode by a couple days.

Hopefully we won't be burned by that, but we have a couple good guests lined up. Hopefully we won't be burned by that, but we have a couple good guests lined up. First, we're going to talk to David Hesslink, who is the newest member of the Mariners front office. He's a baseball operations assistant, and he is, I suppose, a recently retired player, too. He just finished his first and, I suppose, only pro season. He was drafted by the Mariners out of MIT, so he does not have the typical background of a 22-year-old baseball operations assistant. We're going to ask him about that, how he got into baseball. He's worked for the Rays and the Astros, too, in the past.

So a top-rated general managerial prospect, I would say. And we're also going to talk to Andrew Varga, who is an Effective Evolved listener and an incredibly creative YouTube baseball highlight video maker. So we're going to talk to him about his process for making those videos. A little bit of banter before we get to that. I just have one thing, which is something that happened late last week. If you're listening to this on Monday, did you see the alignment that the Astros had against Albert Pujols? Yes. RJ Anderson. Yeah. RJ Anderson tweeted this picture of the Astros playing Albert Pujols as RJ said, A, to pull the ball and B, to crawl to first base. And Mike Petriello also tweeted the stat cast version of this. So this was a 6-3 put out and Carlos Correa fielded the ball.

And as Mike says, he is practically in the parking lot fielding this ball he's like in short left field and the funny thing is that this i guess was taken at the moment that correa fielded the ball and the little dot that represents pool holes is like basically still at home plate like he just hasn't moved very much up the line and if you look at the rj screen cap it's like the third baseman is on the very edge of the dirt basically the lip of the grass and then correa at short i guess is like not that far from the actual left fielder he's like way behind the infield dirt and then altuve is playing in center field basically it's like it's like uh it's basically like a five-man outfield essentially for Albert Pujols and I mean clearly

there is some sense here in that Albert Pujols is literally the slowest player in baseball or at least the slowest position player in baseball. He is at the very bottom of the sprint speed leaderboard, like 444th or something out of 444 qualifying players. So makes sense, is sort of sad to see, obviously. But like, is there any way to, I guess there's no way to counter this because like, even if he were to bunt and get a bunt down, I just don't know that he could beat out a bunt. I mean, and I don't mean to like pile on. I mean, he's an older player. He's had lots of lower body and foot issues. And this is what happens when you get to an advanced age as a formerly incredible baseball player but man this is an extreme way of playing anyone yeah and it makes all the sense in the world because he can't run and the further

back your infielders play the more likely they are to cover all the ground and get any sort of ground ball so i think the only real thing for pujols to try to do at this point because he's not going to get any faster i think we all know that to be true is he just has to go up there and try to hit every single thing he sees into the air kind of do the the very late career frank thomas thing when i mean even thomas back then was running like a 266 babbitt in his later years which is not terrible it's not pujolsian thomas maybe was a better runner than pujols but if there's anyone at this point who needs to just dive headfirst into the fly ball revolution, it's Albert Pujols who needs to relearn a new way to hit, I guess, in his later 30s. Because his current way is just he can't do anything but hit a home run because his balls from play are doomed. Yeah, I mean, he is, as we speak, he has a.255 BABIP, which is ninth lowest among qualifying players. So there are players with worse BABIPs. It's not like this is historic or anything. Some of that is partially luck. I don't know. For all we know, he's had good luck and he's ended up at.255.

And some guys below him, maybe not. I mean, it does obviously tend to be slower guys down there. It's Mike Napoli, it's Todd Frazier, it does obviously tend to be slower guys down there. It's Mike Napoli, it's Todd Frazier, it's Jose Bautista, people like that largely. And then maybe also some people who've had some fluky luck go against them. But it makes me wonder. I mean, the Astros have been among the most aggressive, if not the most aggressive team when it comes to shifting and unusual alignments. So I don't know how widespread this is but if this kind of thing catches on man i mean it's just it's hard to see how pool holes will be able to play out this contract i know we've talked about that before but he is at this point just such a drain when

he's playing every day and it doesn't seem like there's a way to recover from that and you know if teams now start exploiting his lack of speed in this way it's going to be even harder for him to find his way on base and he has so many years left on this contract it's just it's really i i don't like that his career is ending this way but it's hard to imagine that he will actually finish out this contract as a player at some point the angels are Angels are just going to have to eat it. Yep. Although I'll say he's slugging 397, but he's up to 96 RBI. He still has a chance of being one of those 100 RBI guys

without slugging 400, the Joe Carter special, I guess. But when you're DJ LeMayhew or you're Ryan Howard and you see the defense shift in some extreme way, you can say, okay, I get it. I have a tendency, but good for them. I'm just going to try to beat it. But I don't know, Pujols' shift might be like the first truly just insulting, like mean shift that's existed. It's like almost an unwritten rules violation or something. It feels like, you know, like a player of his status. I'm almost surprised that, I mean, there's something at stake in this game. I would

imagine the Astros are playing for the best record in the AL at the very least. And so that kind of consideration is silly. But on the other hand, this is almost analogous to like not bunting on a pitcher who can't run or something like that. It's basically that. And Pujols is one of the most revered players in the game not only because he was the best player in the game but also just as a teammate and veteran and all of that and yeah this almost borders on offensive which is like I'm kind of surprised that a team would do this even though it makes sense to do this I wonder where the line is like I don't know what else you could do but where where does a shift start to violate the unwritten rules because this should be a new unwritten rule we don't have any

for the shift that i know of aside from bud norris not wanting any shifts but that's not really a problem anymore like it's it's sort of the opposite but the same equivalent of like when you're playing softball and say oh everybody come in this person can't hit at all because there's some weaklingers at the plate so you just have like a nine man infield this is just it's cruel and i don't know what more you could do uh i mean it's like if i don't know reggie willits i need a better contemporary comparison than reggie willits because nobody understands reggie willits anymore uh like nakashima yeah or like if munanori kawasaki were to come up and then you're just like all right we don't we don't even need a left fielder just like go away right just go sit down it's like the little league

thing it's like you know when some weak hitter comes up and it's like oh everybody in you know and like everyone's saying it and you can see them moving in and it's just like devastating to some kid it's almost like that i didn't even mention the first baseman is basically playing second base in this clip because like he can i mean pooh holes obviously has a pronounced pull tendency on grounders and you don't have to worry about not beating him back to the bag if you're the first baseman so first baseman is like playing almost halfway between first second and deep too like and it doesn't matter because of course he can beat Pujols to the bag anyway Albert Pujols is WRC plus this year on ground balls is one so that's

fun it's like it's not exactly the same thing but when I used to come into pitch and when I was like a reliever in high school so you know I was going places I would come out of the bullpen I would take the mound and I would hear almost without fail I didn't I never threw that hard I wasn't good look just let it go I wasn't very good but i would take the mound and i would do my warm-up pitches and almost without fail at least one or two people in the other team's dugout would start to be like this guy's got nothing this guy's got nothing let's go get him this guy's got nothing and it's like why do you have to be mean about it just come out and like just come out and hit and prove that i have nothing but don't say it to me. I'm young. Like I'm a minor.

Yeah. Well, I guess Albert Pujols is a big boy. Hopefully he can handle this. But man, yeah, it is very obvious. I don't know that anyone has a shift quite like this in the majors. So it's something to watch because if this catches on, I don't know how many other teams have done something akin to this but if this just becomes the norm against pujos i mean it's going to be even bigger hit that his stats take so let's see i'm looking up everybody who's hit at least

100 grand balls this year and okay so pujos has the sixth lowest opposite field rate he's at 4.7 percent of his granders to the opposite field but he's got nothing on carlos santana 1.7 percent opposite field grand balls so there you go yeah all right did you have something you wanted to say too i do i have something i would like to say so i don't know how best to introduce this uh i don't even know how best to oh i know how it came up so somebody in my chat was pointing out how often Nationals prospect, now Major Leaguer, Victor Robles has been hit by pitches. Ah, yes. I thought this might come up.

Yeah. So I don't remember what I said in response in the chat, but I ran some numbers. Okay. So this year in the minor leagues, hit by pitches occurred in 1.4% of plate appearances. 1.4%. And Victor Robles, let's's see where does he show up on this list this year in the minor leagues got hit in 4.2 percent of his plate appearances that's high that's not special i'll tell you what's special the league leader in all the minor leagues

in getting hit by pitches this year was someone named brett cumberland he got hit in 9.1 percent of his plate appearances he was hit 41 times times. But, oh, it gets better. Nick, I don't know how to pronounce it. Nick Sine, I'm going to go with Sine, Sine. Nick Sine, Blue Jays draft pick. Nick Sine, he was hit 38 times this year. He batted 293 times. He was hit in 13% of his plate appearances.

Nick Sine, 13%. Let me just, in case you're not, in case you don't remember the minor league average of 1.4%, Nick Sine got hit more than nine times as often as the minor league average. 13%. He was easily among all minor league hitters this year who batted at least 200 times. Nick Sine, easily the minor league leader in hit by pitch rate. I'm not- He set a record. Yeah. Midwest League record. Yes. Excellent. Well, let's go back to last season. So last season, the minor league leader in hit by pitch rate i'm not set a record yeah midwest league record yes excellent well let's go back to last season so last season the minor league average for hit by

pitch rate was a very similar 1.3 i looked at every single batter who batted at least 200 times victor robles he moves up the list 6.7 he's in eighth place and hit by pitch rate he's right behind someone named ray patrick ditter who has the most sexually uncomfortable sounding name that i think i've seen in the minor leagues in a while although he's still below marcus mooney but first place 9.2 percent nick sinay nick sinay first place among all minor leaguers last season and hit by pitch rate i will also point out apropos of nothing in 14th place is someone named court peterson k-o-r-t court is this like bort is that what we're doing court anyway so nixon a highest hit by pitch rate last year in the minors highest hit by pitch rate this year in the minors not done nixon a he played college baseball at the university at buffalo is that what it's called

not university of buffalo well there's a university at buffalo which that what it's called not university of buffalo well there's a university at buffalo which doesn't seem like the right kind of terminology to use but in any case he played college ball somewhere and that college is in the mid-american conference so nixon a he played minor league ball in 2015 a little bit but he didn't play that much so i didn't look up his minor league numbers he got hit seven times in very limited action with bluefield but 2015 nick sinea was a regular he was drafted in the 22nd round by the blue jays and nick sinea in 2015 was the league leader in hit by pitches however in 2014 in the mid-american conference he was also the league leader in hit by pitches nick sinea is just a hit by a pitch freaking machine he was at 25 times in 2014 then 22 times in machine. He was hit 25 times in 2014, then 22 times in 2015,

then a combined of 25 times in 2014, 29 times in 2015, 25 times in 2016, and 38 times in 2017. He has this year, he hit this year, I guess it's over, one home run. Last year, he hit one home run. In college, he hit a combined two home runs, one each season. Then he hit one with Bluefield. So Nixon A in the minors has batted 229. He's slugged 282.

And he's got an on-base percentage of 412. Yes. And I looked up, I mean, I have a video I pulled up from Minor League Baseball. I could send it to you, but it's not really remarkable. It's just the one video clip I could find of Nixon A hitting, because you might not be surprised to learn there's not many that exist he's up there he's hitting a triple to the opposite field but there's nothing too extreme that i see and maybe it's just the camera angle he doesn't look like he's like crowding the plate

but something something is going on with nixon a maybe people just like really don't like him a lot and he's just like always mouthing off and getting hit by intentional pitches but one of the other incredible parts is if you search nick sinea baseball clips on the internet what you end up with is like a million different clips of him working out in the weight room and there's like all these clips uploaded by a blue jays i think professional trainer and you just say nick sinea getting like agile and buff so that he can hit one home run and get drilled by a pitch 38 times it's like let's get the biggest possible thighs and biceps to attract baseballs to hit them that's the best i got he's 23 years old based on his batted ball contact he's probably not going

anywhere but this is unbelievable and this is this might be this might be extreme enough that it's actually worth a fan graphs article about a player who will not ever likely do anything but man at the very least we should try to talk to this guy yeah well actually as it turns out i saw that he came up in your chat and i googled him and the first result that i found when i googled nixon a hit by pitches or something was an article a profile by my other baseball podcast co-host michael bowman no when he used to write for d1baseball.com he covered college baseball he wrote a profile of nixon a in april 2015 it says by any means necessary buffalo's nixon a michael loves guys who get hit he loves brandon guyer and i mean this is like nowhere near brand Geyer. This is Brandon Geyer is

comparatively unplunked next to Nixon A. So Michael, I think, is interested in talking to him. I don't know. Both of my podcasts want to talk to Nixon A and I understand why because just the bruises he must accumulate. Anyway, I would recommend looking at this article from a couple of years ago by Michael. He at the time had a 496 OBP Nick Sine and was racking up hit by pitches even then. And it sounds as if Sine at the time was also perplexed by why he gets hit so much, because it sounds like he does not stand that close to the plate it says sine has tried a more conventional approach but the results have been more or less the same quote i took a little bit off the plate stepped away from it just to get more on the barrel so i can start barreling up balls a little more but they keep hitting me and i'll take it because i love to get on base he said and uh he says i never was one to just stick my elbow out and get hit they throw the high inside fastball and i go with my stride see the

pitch come back and it still ends up hitting me so it sounds like it's some kind of like magnetic situation here i don't totally understand what is happening but i am fascinated and i want to hear from him somehow and somewhere just i mean about just just the like maintenance that must be required when you get hit this often. This is crazy. He must be in constant pain. I'm looking over his game log, and let's see. He barely played in April.

He got hit 11 times in May, 10 more times in both July and August. On the Baseball Cube website, it's got some category called Other Batting Statistics. It looks like Sine played in a few summer leagues. He played for the Syracuse junior chiefs in 2013, hit 10 times in a summer. And then in 2014, played for the front Royal Cardinals in something called the Valley League, 19 hit by pitches. And then he stole 28 bases after that. Oh, by the way, he hit zero home runs. So he slugged 365,

but he had a 539 on base percentage is nixon a the most interesting baseball player on the planet well no but he's he's still interesting and oh what a delight it would be fun to do a little more research or maybe you have done all the research possible aside from just talking to the man yeah yeah this is amazing yeah nixon a just an outlier i love the outliers we all love the outliers and he certainly is one allliers, and he certainly is one. All right. That was good banter. I guess we can get to the first of our guests now. So we will be back in just a second with David Hessling of the Seattle Mariners. so okay according to baseball reference an unimpeachable source, there have been four players ever drafted from MIT. One was the immortal Al Dotful, drafted in 1972.

And then there was Jason Sosminski, who was drafted in 2000, actually made the majors very, very briefly and accumulated negative 0.3 wins above replacement. And then the other two were both drafted this year. And we are talking to one of them now, David Hesslink, who just got finished with his pro debut season and now is in the Mariners' front office. So this is a somewhat unusual arrangement or a quicker transition than usual from one stage of a baseball career to the next. So we wanted to have David on to talk about this. So David, thank you for coming on. You are now a baseball operations assistant as of three days ago when

you started in the office. Absolutely. Nice having me, Ben. Yeah. So tell me about being a baseball player at MIT. And I know that this was unusual because you and your teammate, Austin Filiere, if I'm pronouncing that right, he was drafted by the Cubs. And so this was the first time that a school in that division, the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference, had had two players drafted in the same year. It was the only Division III school in the country to have two players selected in this year's draft. So is that a fluke or does it reflect some change in the MIT baseball program? I think the MIT baseball program has been on its way up for a while. I think before our current head coach took over, we posted a one in 26 season or something

right around there. and everything's almost completely changed in terms of we've got a very competitive ball club now that every year is making a run at the division three college world series at the regional runs where you know perennial favorites to win our divisions at this point our conference rather and that goes a lot towards the kind of program that the coaching staff has built there and the players that i was playing with there so we certainly feel like we have a competitive program there and having this having the opportunity to have two players go in the same year is kind of a good reflection for us on where we think our program is at. I went to an East Coast Division three school and I didn't play baseball, but I nearly played baseball. But I know that our

program many much like many of the East Coast Division three programs don't really get scouted very heavily at all. So how few opportunities would you say that you even had to have scouts in attendance in the first place? Yeah, I think on the scouting front, you definitely got to tip your cap to Austin, who was our shortstop at MIT. I think he plays third now for the Cubs short season affiliate. And he was the one that was drawing all the scouts because he's a real good ball player. He played in the Cape, had a lot of success in the Cape. I think he led in home runs. I remember quickly led all the entire Cape League in home runs. So he was drawing scouts out to our games. And so it was sort of a happy circumstance because he was generating interest. My name came up because I was on the roster with him. And that's kind of how it went from there.

So you studied mechanical engineering. I mean, what is the perception of athletes, I guess, at MIT? Is it like the typical school where the athlete kind of has a leg up social status wise, or is it not really that way because the school is just, you know, it's such a strong reputation for academics and the intellectual side of things? Yeah, no, it's a good question. So at MIT, there's actually a lot of athletes. We've got, I think somewhere we've got the biggest athletic program of any Division III school, and we have the most different sports. And so you actually, a lot of athletes we've got I think you've read somewhere we get the biggest athletic program and any of any division three school and we have the most different sports and so you actually a lot of people that you come across our athletes but in general your athletes the best way to describe them

is busy just because it's a lot with trying to play whatever sport it is play competitively and keep up with all the school where there's family at the same time definitely I learned how to time manage how to balance everything out definitely engaging I guess is the more politically correct term than busy, but it's definitely a fun experience. Yeah. So tell us about yourself. Give us a scouting report on David Hessling, the pitcher. You are a lefty, listed at 6'2", 190. What is or was your game? Well, that's got to be one of the most favorable clerical errors of all time. If you see me in person, I'm about 160 pounds, and they made a title in the roster that gave me it.

It made me seem a lot bigger than I actually am. No, I was a left-hand pitcher. I had been starting until I started pitching for the Aqua Sox. So through middle school all the way up through college, I was a starting pitcher. I think at every level I've played, I've had a below-average fastball but an above-average changeup. So I tell people that I get out not because I can throw slow, but because I can throw slower.

And so keeping guys off balance, throwing the ball where I want it to in the zone, and kind of controlling the pace and rhythm of the game was kind of how I got all my outs throughout my career. You've said before in previous interviews that even though, of course, it's always a surprise to get drafted, you had a good sense that the Mariners were going to take you because i think quote 29 other teams weren't interested and the mariners the mariners wound up selecting you 34th round did you have some sort of general understanding that you were going to an organization with a future in a front office role or was this all kind of player first and then you'd go from there uh it was sort of a little bit of both um i had talked to the front office ahead of time and then the playing thing kind of emerged from there.

And then so it was kind of see where the playing career goes. And then at the end of the season, have a kind of open and frank conversation about how I can be the most help to the organization. And the conclusion of that conversation was that I started here in the front office three or four days ago. And did you look at your track man stats and study yourself when you got to the office and come to the conclusion that you are better as a front office member? Roughly speaking, yeah, that's the way it goes. It was definitely fun, though, to pull up some of those numbers and see the spin rates and that kind of thing.

It's a good thing they don't measure too many exit velocities in short A because there was a couple of ball go hit that were probably still flying. Yeah. Well, what is that like to go from Division III to the Northwest League, which is, you know, short season A, but this is pro ball. This is a whole different ball game, literally. Yeah. So I think the biggest adjustment in and of itself was just the sheer number of hours

that being a minor league player requires out of you. So, I mean, playing, you know, every single day, 30 out of 31 days every month, you know, being on the road, traveling back and forth, sleeping in hotels, never really getting any kind of a break. You know, the Bull Durham, the bus rides are almost pretty close to how it is now still. You know, you get on the bus and you go and you play the next day. So just almost that lifestyle adjustment was probably the biggest adjustment from the Division III level where we played a couple times a week to really being a full-time professional baseball player.

You've said before, as well as long as I'm just going to keep quoting you to yourself, you've said before that one of your adjustments from D3 baseball to the low minors is that in the low minors, in Everett, you've actually got good food options. And you've got good food options before and after the game, which D3 budgets aren't enough to get there. You might be the only minor leaguer who I think has ever praised the food options in the minor leagues. So does this speak more ill to what was available at MIT, or would you say that the Mariners are doing some sort of fairly progressive job of providing good-filling nutrition to players even in the low minor leagues? I think they did pretty well. They did the best they could with the budget we had. And I was

overall, as you can tell from that interview, I was pretty impressed. And so I think the Mariners are doing a good job taking care of everybody. But at the same time, anything's better than nothing, which is kind of where I was coming from there. And it never really occurred to me before in my career that that could even be a thing that they would give us free food like that. So some of both would probably be the right answer to that question. So I don't know who the top drafted person you played with or faced this summer was, but did you, I guess you were around some more talented players perhaps than you have ever played with. Is that right? I guess, is there a single hitter you faced who was maybe a top prospect or someone who was more intimidating than the typical competition you faced in school?

I think probably the biggest thing that we came across in the Northwest League was, I forget his first name, but it's Roger Clemens' kid. I think it's Casey Clemens. He was hitting cleanup for Vancouver when he went out there and pitched. So that was probably the closest thing to a suburb name we had in Northwest League. pitch and so that was probably the closest thing to a suburb name we had in northwest league when you were playing with with everett and you had this this understanding that you were going to have a frank conversation after the year obviously you weren't actively working in the front office for the mariners organization at the time but there was there was an understanding that you probably would or that you certainly would so did you have any sort of i don't know i guess

awkward interaction what was it like for your your teammates to know that when the season was over, you would end up in a position where you have a certain amount of maybe slim, but still some authority over their professional careers as players? You know, I don't think anybody really took it like that on the team itself. You know, I think that was, you know, something that could have potentially arisen. But I think, you know, I was there as a player first, I was not working for the front office. office and I've you know played just like I played all my life and it was a part of the team was a part of the guys felt you know just like I was a regular teammate in that regard so I think the you know I established a pretty genuine relationship all the way around with the with the players that were there made a lot of really good friends while I was there and so I

think that you know at the end of the day the conversations you know, which direction I was going to move at the end of the season was, you know, something that's just kind of a reality check that I think, you know, every minor league player will wind up thinking about at some point or another, unless you get on a fast track up to the big league. So for me, it just wound up being kind of the right time all the way around to just come on in and start helping out as soon as I could here in the front office. You also finished with the most wins in MIT history. And it's funny because the profile that MIT published about you, I guess, right before the draft or right around then was more about your prospects as a front office employee

than a player, even though it touted your achievements at MIT as a player. So can you give us the origin story, how you got into baseball analysis? I know you studied mechanical engineering, then you went on to work for the Rays and the Astros while you were in school. So how did you get into this side of the game? Yeah, so it's like I think you'd find with anybody's origin story and the kind of this side of the game is there's always some element of luck or fluke involved. So I was a mechanical engineer who loved baseball and was like mechanical engineering and just kind of through a fluke thing, I wound up getting a chance in a mechanical engineering course to dive into the analytic side with Will Cousins, who's now down with the Rays. And so we did a project in conjunction with the Astros there.

And then the next summer I went for, did a full-time internship with the Rays all summer long between my junior and senior year of school. And by the time that I was into, you know, I said to myself at the beginning of that summer, okay, I'm going to throw myself all the way into baseball and just absorb myself completely a hundred percent. I know I've always loved it and I'm going to see if I ever get tired of it. And at the end of the summer, I walked away still wanting to do more baseball, still completely in love with the game. So that was kind of when I knew that my long-term career was going to bring me into a front office somewhere or doing something baseball related somewhere just because I'd love the sport too much to walk away from it. When you were working with the Astros,

it seemed like you were working on sort of an individual or maybe a couple of research projects. But then you were an intern with the Rays for quite a while and now you're working for a new front office. Obviously, you had only so much access to whatever was going on in each of the previous organizations. But how do you sort of handle the adjustments and what you bring over what you don't want to bring over what you're not allowed to bring over? Like, what is it now that you're working for a new organization? What is there any sort of benefit? I guess? Do you know much about what the raise were up to? Are there non-disclosure agreements?

Or how much are you allowed to sort of bring over? And how much are you trying to bring over from what you've done in the past? Yeah, that's a fair question. And, you know, when I started with the raise, I signed something that said, you know, what I do here is the raise property, that kind of thing. The Ashes project was actually a little bit different. It was actually through MIT. So before that project started, we agreed that it was whatever I did was completely public. So I could email it to you guys after this chat if you want.

So that I would have no qualms using here if the situation arose. But a lot of the stuff I did with the Rays, all the work I did with the Rays, all stayed in Tampa Bay when I left. And while I have a general idea of a lot of the things that they do and incorporate, there were walls that interns didn't get to go behind for exactly the reason of what you just described, knowing that at the end of my internship, I may or may not be coming back to Tampa. And so the things that I learned were the things that I needed in order to provide my value to the race, to do my project with the race. And so that's kind of how they approach keeping each team's competitive advantage, because at the end of the day, it's about trying to separate yourself

from the other 29 any way you can. And can you give us any examples of things that you worked on either in school or any of the stuff that you can talk about, the research projects that you've done in the past? Yeah, so broadly speaking, my Ashurst project was pitch classification for minor league pitch FX teams.

When the system went online, they didn't want to have to have somebody tag every pitch at every game. So I wrote a pitch classifying algorithm there. I think a lot of work's been done on that since, but at the time it was something that hadn't been approached too much. And then with the Rays, my primary task was outfield shifting, which was something that they were doing that I kind of revisited for them. And I won't go into too much more detail on that just so I don't cross over any lines. But broadly speaking, that was what I worked on most of summer do you have sort of similar responsibilities now with the Mariners like do you know what you're going to be focused on or is it

sort of they want to have you in the organization and they'll try to figure out a an area where you fit best yeah it's just starting out so I mean it's really a better question probably ask me in a month or two or you know whenever it is like because I'm literally just getting through the point of getting my computer set up, getting my name tag on my desk, that kind of thing. Most of this week, I still have yet to catch a Manor game at Safeco Field. We're looking forward to that when they come home on Tuesday. Well, the funny thing is they could probably

use you to pitch. Yeah, if they start looking for somebody in the stands, I'll be waving my hand. No, so we'll see. I'm anticipating doing some analytics side of things uh and then you always kind of get exposure to all the different things going on some arbitration work the player development work the advanced scouting work and just kind of see where

where it takes us like i said still a little too early to fully know which exactly which path i'll head down my advice would be you're working for j DePoto. You should probably brush up on some transactions rules just so you know. Yeah. isn't so much an obstacle as it was in the past, but there are still ways I would think in which having played at some level is an advantage. So is there anything you can think of, even if it's just from your maybe one summer in pro ball or from playing in college that gives you any kind of edge when it comes to understanding something or being familiar with something that someone else might not be? I mean, you know, there's some fundamental, you know, I've got a pretty good understanding of how to play the game, what goes into it and, you know, what kinds of, maybe I have a little bit

of perspective on what would be useful as a player or not, or, you know, haven't been with some of the players that I've played with, what generally the kind of pulse is on how things are perceived from this side of the game by that side of the game. But I think the biggest thing really is just trying to sort of foster an understanding of how all the aspects are working because everybody's trying to work together to achieve the same goal and learning how to kind of communicate across what everybody's doing at every level. You know, when a pitcher says I can't find feel for my curve ball,

then how does that translate to how can I help him from the front office? And similarly, when I'm in the front office and I'm working on my analytic edge, how can I communicate that onto the field to the coaching staff to help everybody get better? So I think really the biggest emphasis or potential edge that I might be able to have is, and I think anybody can develop it. I think I've just had been fortunate to have already kind of kickstarted that process is learning how to communicate all different aspects of the game across all the different people that are interacting and trying to make the whole organization be successful. So I think that's really where the key is in the communication.

I know that this sort of goes back to a previous question that was asked, but just to kind of get a little more specific to it, with you making this transition into the front office, you said before that you made a lot of good friends on Everett when you were playing with them for a few months. And have you sort of talked to them, I guess, about how your relationship might evolve? Is it just something you're going to feel out? Because it would be easy to see how there would be things with that maybe you can't talk about, and that could potentially put some

sort of strain on what could be otherwise a strong and developing friendship. Yeah, I haven't had any issues with that yet. And, you know, hopefully I won't. But, you know, I'll kind of play it by ear as we go in terms of how to approach different situations as they arise but uh you know i think the mariners organization in general is very good about sort of communicating across a bunch of different levels and being pretty open you know being able to have conversations openly like the one that i had at the end of the season about which direction was going to be most beneficial for me to help the organization so i don't anticipate having too many problems with it, but I see how it could wind up being an issue. But just given the faces involved and given sort of the culture and attitude around here and with the way the

Mariners approach the game, I don't think it's going to be too much of a problem. And you go from playing to being in a front office. What other sort of off-season jobs would your former teammates be doing? What are some of them doing now? Because as we know, minor league pay is not great. It's hard to survive on that alone. So I'm sure that a lot of them are also picking up work in the off-season, but not the kind of work that you did. Yeah, it varies wildly in terms of who does what. A lot of times, some guys will work seasonal jobs. One guy, you know, his family owns a Christmas tree farm, which is like the perfect off-season gig for him.

Some guys will go on to keep playing baseball down in the Venezuelan Winter League or the Dominican Winter League. We sign another contract to continue playing internationally. And then, you know, some people will go home and live off their signing bonus

and get ready for next season. Others will find random part-time jobs with connections they know here and there. And even other guys will go back to school that haven't finished yet and won't be living the college life again. So it really just kind of varies wildly. But yeah, you're right. Everybody's got to find something to do to pass the off-season time because, like you said, they got to do something to pay the bills. Yeah. Did you get the sense that players at that level understand what teams are looking at, players at that level understand what teams are looking at, what information teams have at their disposal, how teams are making decisions about their future. I mean, they don't have the same awareness of that that you do because of your background, but are they aware of those things

or are they still sort of thinking the old school traditional stats that maybe you're brought up looking at, but teams don't actually use to decide their fate no i think i think they they do a pretty good job here of communicating that so like a pitching instance that they talk to us all the time about is they they tell us less to worry about our wins loss record or more to worry about our first pitch strike percentage and that's something that's really a focus of our player development and at the end of the year i think i don't remember who it was but they give out an award for whoever keeps the best first pitch strike percentage throughout the minor leagues all year long so they make it clear what it is they're

looking for and what the Mariners define as success that'll get you to the next level. And so in that sense, you kind of get pulled away from traditional stats and towards these, you know, some of these newer objectives that are, you know, more correlated with helping your career progress, helping you win games. Now you throw left and bat right or you did or you would if you were to throw. I still do. Yeah right I guess you always will. So how did that happen? So the story goes I was two or three years old and I only hear this story from my parents I'm too young to remember it but apparently I used to be right-handed in everything I did and then

one day I got obstinate and got stubborn and copied my dad and everything he does. So he has the weird combination. And so I just copied him and switched when I was about two or three years old. So the origin on where it comes from, you'd have to give him a call and ask him. Okay. You are no longer, I guess, going to pitch. And you've referred to yourself as being sort of a modern day Jimmy Moyer. Jerry DiPoto is 49 years old. He last pitched at least at the major league level in 2000. Do you think that you could throw harder than Jerry DiPoto is 49 years old. He last pitched, at least at the major league level, in 2000.

Do you think that you could throw harder than Jerry DiPoto today? We'll have to put that one to the test. We'll have to put that one to the test. I would like to see that, yeah. So Peter Gavins wrote an article about your teammate, Austin, we talked about last year, and the headline called him future third baseman slash general manager. And I guess the idea would be that both of you are on that kind of trajectory, although I guess now you have sort of a head start on him, at least in the general manager capacity. Because if you are getting your front office career started and he's still playing, it'll take him longer to get there.

take him longer to get there. But I guess if we don't have any hope of you getting the lifetime MIT war total into positive territory, do you think Austin will be the one to do that? Because I'd like to see MIT grads with a positive war. I would too. Nothing will make me happier. And I think that if we got one guy to put our faith and hope into, I think Austin's a good candidate. He was the real deal when he was playing for us, carried the team, carried our lineups to the point whereby at the time that he left, he said he left our team after his junior year and barely anybody would pitch to him junior year because they knew that he would just punish them whatever they threw over the plate. So no, I think he's got a real good shot. I think the Cubs recognize that in the draft and I think that he's on a good path and we're definitely all rooting for him at the MIT Engineers program.

Yeah, he was an eighth rounder. All right. So lastly, I guess we'll close with the question that we get all the time and you have probably started to get too, which is how do you do what you do? So for anyone who is sort of in a similar boat, you are, of course, just out of college and 22. And we have a lot of listeners who are maybe in school and looking forward to that time when they're trying to get a job out of college and 22. And we have a lot of listeners who are maybe in school and looking forward to that time when they're trying to get a job out of college. So

other than being good enough to pitch at least for one summer and get drafted, how would you recommend that people go about getting seen and as front office prospects, I guess, going to MIT helps, but short of that, what should people study? What sort of research projects would you recommend? I don't know. I think anybody, and again, I'll just kind of get to see the other side of that now that I'm just starting. But I think for me, what helped get me here is a passion for the game and loving what I do, demonstrating some initiative on some different projects and things. I took an online salermetrics course from Tufts or Boston University, one of the two. I did a mixed up and that was super helpful and kind of

was a good feel for anybody who's just trying to jump in for the first time and get themselves oriented. And then, you know, I think it comes back to passion initiative and doing something to kind of set yourself away and put something, basically something that's a conversation starter when you have that phone call with the front office and something that you have to talk about. And I think that's kind of where it all starts. All right. Well, we are happy to have you on. And I don't know if this will be your first podcast interview, but if you go on to fulfill that Gammon's headline and be a GM someday, we will have your first podcast appearance perhaps. But at least since...

I think that's true. I think this is the first one. At least since you've been hired by the Mariners as a front office person, because it's only been three days. So we wish you luck with that career and hope you figure out what your role is there quickly and good luck the rest of the year and going forward. Awesome. Thanks a bunch, guys. All right. So we'll take another quick break and we'll be right back with Andrew Varga. Tell a woman, tell a woman that I only want my world like you. Yeah, just you and me. All right, so we are joined now by someone who is the proprietor of,

I'm just going to call it the official Baseball Highlights YouTube account of Effectively Wild, which is not a distinction we have handed out before, but I'm giving it out now. He is Andrew Varga. He is an Effectively Wild listener. He's in the Facebook group, and he makes highlights. I guess you could call them highlights. Some of them are low lights, although for us, they're highlights because these are things that we're interested in. These are not the typical baseball highlights, which is the most athletic players performing the most

athletic feats. These are in many cases, the opposite of that, or as close as you can get to in Major League Baseball. Recent video, for instance, is Jacoby Ellsbury reaching on catcher's interference calls, which we talked about recently. There's Casey McGee hitting double plays, which is something that we've talked about. We've got relievers getting hits. We've got Clayton Kershaw allowing hits to pitchers. We have got pitchers hitting triples. It's all sorts of things that you would not really find in the typical highlights package, but is definitely effectively wild-esque. So Andrew is a freshman at Arizona State University.

He is studying journalism, although, as we just said, it's not too late for him to change majors. Hello, Andrew. Hi, guys. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So you started this YouTube channel late last year. What was the impetus for this? You've had some success with it because you have some videos here with view counts in the six figures, and that's pretty good, I would say, because these are kind of esoteric,

obscure subjects in many ways. So what made you want to start the channel, and how do you get inspired to make one of these videos? I'm surprised it's kind of taken off like this. But so originally, I was only planning to make one video, and it was that first one, the Matt Peskersian Getting Excited compilation, just because I think he's a terrific announcer, and I loved how he would really freak out like nobody else would in the calls. So I got, around that time, I got a new computer. I had the capability to edit these videos. And then

I just started after that, that one took off and I started seeing it got a thousand views, which was big for me at the time. And then after that, I started, this was in free agency and I didn't know what was going to happen with Sergio Romo. And so I made that Sergio Romo striking guys out video just because I was trying to cope with him leaving the Giants, which obviously hadn't happened before. And it just kind of took off from there. hawk harrelson calling white socks walk-off losses it's just a litany of him saying that the game is over very sadly and with zero excitement in his voice there's montages of players getting traded and hugging their teammates in the dugout there's jared weaver giving up home runs gonna miss that site but it is preserved here forever so how do these come about do you just like see something on twitter on the facebook group or whatever and you figure there is no highlights video for this so i better make one yeah so a lot of these are about or not

i shouldn't say a lot but some of these are about random players who i really enjoy like Steve Ciszek I don't know how many other people like there's a lot of Steve Ciszek as much as I do I yes I compiled all 120 of his career saves up to that point so so some of the videos are obviously inspired by players who I have just random affection for a lot of them are just things that I see happen a lot during, or I shouldn't say a lot, but strange things that happen during games that don't have videos already made of them. So like before I make all these videos, I check and make sure there's no video currently on YouTube that is like these, the only one being the MLB players getting traded, but that video only had two players getting traded. So I didn't count that one. And yeah, the Effectively Wild has been an inspiration for some of these. The Jacoby Ellsbury one, I hadn't listened to the podcast before I started making that one.

So not necessarily the Jacoby Ellsbury one, but the Casey McGee one, I believe, came after I listened to somebody on Effectively Wild talk about him. But he sure hit into a lot of double plays with the Giants. I could definitely find enough clips to make a video for that. It's because of you that now I know how Jose Ureña throws. So I would like to credit you for that because I've never watched him pitch before in my life. How do you fight what I imagine might be some sort of... Clearly, you have, I would say, a thorough personality, a completionist tendency.

But when you're doing something like, for example, a video of MLB players getting traded, how do you know when to stop as opposed to trying to pursue every last video you possibly can? That's a good question. For that one, there's a surprisingly few amount of players getting traded like that. Those were all the clips that I could find for that one. Now, going back, maybe a better example would be the video I made about players getting thrown out at home going for the inside the park home run, because I could have probably doubled that video in length, but I just had to make a decision to just go to 2010 with that and just end that because otherwise I would be spending way too much time making that video.

Yeah. If there's one on here I'm watching right now, it's just called Pedro Baez just getting shelled. It's Pedro Baez just getting knocked around. So if you're watching Pedro Baez. That's very popular. Yeah, if you're just frustrated with how long he takes to pitch, this is incredibly cathartic. You could just pull it up and watch him getting just knocked around the park. I'm watching Cubs Cardinals right now and I've got another idea right now John Lackey getting mad

this is very good that's going to be my next one probably that one you can't never get to the end of that video that video is as long as John Lackey's life very true so you also

have a clip on here of all 23 gregor blanco home runs are you putting together fake news because there's no way that that's ever happened listen gregor blanco led off a world series game with a home run so gregor blanco is one of my favorite players ever with the giants and it's got a very weird story to how it happened. But I was at a game in the 2014 season, and he got thrown out at the plate going for an inside the park home run. So that was the inspiration for that video. And he got thrown at the plate to walk off the game. So it would have been Angel Bagan-esque.

And for some reason, I just saw him running so fast around the bases that I just said, this guy's my new favorite player. And so that happened. There's also a genre here of poor defensive players making defensive highlights. So is Prince Fielder defensive highlights? There's Billy Butler defensive highlights. And maybe this is sort of like mocking them in a way, but also not. Right.

sort of like mocking them in a way, but also not, right? Because if you watch these highlights, you wouldn't know from just these montages that these are bad defensive players, right? They look like, I mean, even Billy Butler and Ryan Howard at their best in the field look like passable defensive players. Even bad defensive players make good defensive plays. And so this is still fun to watch, even though it's a couple players who are certainly not known for their defensive abilities yeah i was surprised some of the prince fielder highlights from milwaukee he could really he really looked competent out there at first base and he was obviously playing every day so that was finding those highlights was easier than i thought it would be you started of course with the matt

vesker's and clips and this is mostly dedicated to baseball, but you have a few, maybe four, maybe five basketball clips mixed in here, many of them related to, I don't know who this is, but Leandro Barbosa appears to be one of your favorite basketball players of all time. Do you feel like you're cheating on baseball? Because this doesn't feel like... Are you going to try to... Clearly, you've taken off a little

bit in terms of some minor popularity here people seem to love your clips i love going through your clips now so are you just going to remain open to basketball or are you are you going to be content with the baseball dedication yeah this is kind of a dirty secret but basketball is my first love and baseball is number two it's just much easier to find baseball videos online, MLB.com. Up until recently, did a great job with that. And there's a lot more weird things that take place in baseball games, like position players pitching and whatnot, that you just don't see in basketball. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm looking at game day right now. Ejection. Chicago Cubs catcher Wilson Contreras ejected and John Lackey ejected. You have a new clip for the John Lackey Mad video.

Yes, I do. He thought he had strike three on Carlos Martinez. He did not, and he gave up a base hit. And to the catcher. Yeah. How would you go about finding clips of John Lackey Mad? I mean, it's not a rare occurrence necessarily, but you don't want to sit there and watch every single John Lackey mad. I mean, it's not a rare occurrence necessarily, but you don't want to sit there and watch every single John Lackey start. So what would your strategy be when you're trying to

gather clips for one of these things that's not as easy as just like looking up play index or something and finding examples of a certain type of play? Yeah. So probably to start, I would try to find like game recaps where they mentioned Lackey getting frustrated and whatnot and that i'd go on mlb.com and see if there's video of that this one's obviously going to be easy and there's the start was it when he was with the angels when he hit a guy it was his first start back from injury and he hit a guy then lead off batter so i can add that one. But like a video like this, obviously the lackey getting frustrated is more, it's going to take more time. And this could be a couple of days before that one comes out. Yeah. And we know that MLB has been somewhat strict about policing clips and gifs over the

years. And it looks like the Ellsbury video has unfortunately been taken down although that is not the case for the previous videos so are there certain guidelines you're trying to stick to or is there like a type of clip that would run afoul of MLB's regulations that you're aware of or any way to avoid that you You know, the MLB copyright notices, it seems completely random to me. So I'm pretty sure with the Jacoby Ellsbury video right now, I can see it's blocked in five countries. And I'm pretty sure that eventually it'll be back up in a few days. This happened to me just once before with the Odubel Herrera bat flipping video. And that one was back up in a few days, but it seems completely random.

They don't, like, this is only the second video they blocked, but they've claimed copyright on the watch so that they can play their ads before, but they don't call it on all of them, which doesn't make much sense to me. I wonder if we're doing you a disservice by publicizing the existence of YouTube right now. I don't know.

Might get those copyright strikes. Yeah, leave Andrew alone. If anyone from LV is listening, we like this channel. So is there anything on your to-do list that you can tell us about? I don't want anyone to scoop you, but I don't know that anyone is going to put the time and effort into this that you currently have. So is there any like white whale kind of highlight montage that you want to make at some point in the future? Well, just a lot of it is just waiting for the season to end.

I have like players who hit 1,000 in 2017. I'm probably going to make another Giants bullpen blown save video because that didn't change, unfortunately. Tyler Clippard meltdowns, those are coming. Those were a very fun few months there when he was on the Yankees and kept getting high leverage spots for some reason. Those are the few that I'm waiting for the season to end so I can make those. All right.

Well, can we keep you on call? We have all sorts of strange plays that are pointed out to us and weird hypotheticals it would be handy if we could contact you when we have one of these weird situations come up and have you kind of be the official highlight clip maker of effectively wild if that opportunity ever arises although you are clearly busy with making your own videos yeah you just tag me in the group and I'd be happy to. All right. I can give you one right now because I'm looking.

I haven't opened the game. I'm looking at game day. It looks like the pitch that Contreras and Lackey wanted was like clearly a strike. Carlos Martinez was obviously out. Like it's not even close. It's almost over the middle of the plate. And then it was a ball.

Count goes full. Martinez hits a single. So I write about these things every year i write about the worst called strike and the worst called ball those posts are always popular so therefore i'm always going to write them but if you you should just put together a video clip of the worst called strikes and the worst called balls two different clips those would be pretty easy to look up using baseball savant and oh people would love those videos just a whole bunch of terrible called balls over the plate mlb would definitely love those videos yeah i've read i've read those articles before there is the one when kershaw i think threw a pitch right down the middle of under 10s

it was aj ellis had to move his glove i couldn't that one was incredible god i love it there's one there's at least one every single season. One just right down the middle. It never fails. Love it. Love that it happens. Framing, framing, framing. Alright, well tell people where to find

your channel and anything else you'd like to promote. Maybe use code words. Yeah, so true. So my channel is Andrew Varga, and you could follow me on Twitter if you're so inclined, although you might be upset about all the basketball tweets coming up soon at Andrew underscore Varga. And that's V-A-R-G-H-A. All right. Well, I am glad that we came across this. Someone posted your video in the Facebook group, which is how I found this. They didn't even know that you were a Facebook group member, although it seems almost inevitable that someone who would make videos like this would also listen to this podcast. So I'm not shocked. But thanks for all the work and for coming on to tell us about it.

Thanks for having me on, guys. All right. So that will do it for today. Big news. I mentioned that we recorded this a couple days early. In the intervening time, Michael Bauman managed to get back in touch with Nick Sine. So Nick Sine is our guest on today's episode of the Ringer MLB Show. It's just Nick Sine day across all of my podcasts. If you're interested, that should be up later today, Monday, on the Ringer MLB Show feed. We asked him about his bruises and how he's still standing and why he gets hit so much and also threw in a stat about how historic his hit-by-pitch rate is. And it is. It is almost unprecedented.

You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. And five listeners who've already done so include Dirk Keaton, Mark Rohan, Patrick Green, Max Twine, and Byron Ignoyan. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance.

Keep your questions and comments coming via email, podcast at fangraphs.com, or via the Patreon messaging system. We will answer those next time. Keep faking But you can't feel this anymore