Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1161: Dave Cameron’s Goodbye to Blogging

Episode Date: January 10, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and outgoing FanGraphs Managing Editor Dave Cameron review Dave’s decision to retire from writing to take a job as an analyst in the San Diego Padres’ front office, discussing his personal and professional past and future and the past, present, and future of public and private baseball analysis. Audio intro: Tom Petty and The […]

I'm an insider, I've been there in the fire Good night, let me live with some hard promises I crawl to the fire I'm an insider Hello and welcome to episode 1161 of Effectively Wild, I'm an insider That trend will continue today. In Jeff Sullivan's absence, I am joined by Jeff's boss, except that by the time Jeff gets back from vacation, my guest is not going to be his boss anymore. That guest is Dave Cameron, who is for the moment the managing editor of Fangraphs. But at the same instant that this podcast was published, Dave announced to the world that he is about to change his business card, assuming he had a business card before. Does Fangraphs have business cards? I don't know. I've been asking Appleman for like 10 years to give me business cards. And I think like by the time he gets

around to doing them, they won't be a thing anymore. Yeah. Well, you no longer need a Fangraphs business card. You're about to have another one. So tell the people what your new business card will say. That's right. I'm going to be an analyst or senior analyst. I don't think we've actually decided on a title yet. I'm going to work for the San Diego Padres in their research and development department and help them kind of build one. So yeah, I'm going to be AJ Preller's, one of his stat guys, I guess. Yeah.

I mean, that's what the business card will say. AJ Preller's stat guy. This is exciting. This is momentous, obviously, for the internet, for the baseball internet, since you've been one of the leading lights of that community for many years now. And maybe we can talk about that. But I want to get into, obviously, how this came about and what you'll be doing. I suppose, since this is a Fangraphs podcast, before we get to what this means for you and

the Padres, you want to tell people what this means for the site, aside from the fact that it will no longer feature Cameron content. Yeah, so we put up a post last week where we were like now hiring a full-time writer and we just didn't tell anyone that was my job that we were posting and we kind of kept that to ourselves. So yeah, I'm going to be stepping down as managing editor. But I think one of the reasons I was willing to take this job now is that I don't think that Fangraphs has ever had a better staff. Kylie McDaniel returning and Meg Rowley, who joined the site last week, and then whoever we hire out of the insane pool of applicants that we got, like seriously, everyone who applied, like thank you so much for your applications. I'm like, I cannot imagine how difficult the choice is going to be for David Appleman because it's like a lot of my favorite writers are in there. Like it is an incredible

group of not just like people who've been writing, but people who look like they have amazing futures in writing. So, you know, someone amazing is going to come out of that pool to replace me. Obviously, Jeff is, you know, in my mind, still the best baseball writer going today. Sorry, Ben. I don't write about baseball. You're now the best video game writer going today or podcaster. I don't write about this. Fangraphs. As I mentioned in my post, like it was really difficult for me to decide to leave in part because when I got leukemia six years ago, David Appleman took care of me and my family in a way that like went above and beyond what any reasonable employer would have done. Like he just kept sending paychecks while I was in the hospital getting chemo. And, you know, I had to give him the survival odds they gave me. And it was like, there's a decent chance I'm not going

to write for Fangraphs again. I might be dead by the time you're like, you know, and he didn't care. He just kept, he took care of us, you know, made sure we had everything we needed. And just, you know, like that kind of loyalty made this something that I have not entertained previously. And also, you know, just really wanting Fangraphs to, to succeed long-term. Like I'm going to always be rooting for Fangraphs. This is going to be, you know, a part of my heart for the rest of my life. But looking at Meg and Travis and Eno and Jeff and whoever we hire and Kylie and Eric and David Lorela and Craig Edwards and Chris Mitchell, like this is an incredible, incredibly talented team. They're going to do awesome things without me. So this was an opportunity. I felt like I could finally say, you know what, Fangraphs is going to do great. I'm going to go have my own new adventure and certainly with mixed emotions, but I'm excited to go to see baseball from the other side of things. I know you've, you know, spent some times on the other side of the wall and you've gotten to peek under the hood a little bit. And this will be my first chance to kind of go see that side of baseball. And I'm excited to kind of, you know,

I think there's a lot of things about baseball I don't know. And there's a lot of things that you can only get exposed to on that side of the game. And, and I'm really excited to kind of learn a lot of things and go in with, you know, open ears, open eyes and say, you know, what can I learn in the, in this time in San Diego? And what can I do to really help, help this organization, help the people there, help, help everyone the best I can, but really just, you know, be part of a team that's going to do something pretty cool for the next few years. I know you've already received hundreds of applications. Are you still accepting applications? Absolutely.

Anyone who wants to send in, you know, we're not at a point where we're... There may be people out there now that they know they don't have to work with David. Exactly. Yeah. All those people who are like, Cameron, that guy's the worst. If you want to go come work with Jeff Sullivan instead, you've sent in your application now. You know, I will say like, it's an incredibly talented group of people that you'll be competing against. So I can't promise that you'll get the job, but we're, we're still reading

every application that comes in. We're looking over every resume. We're looking at all the job samples that were sent in all the writing samples. If you're listening to this podcast and you didn't know we were hiring, you might not read Fangraphs enough, but you know, feel free to start reading Fangraphs more often and let us know, you know, show us a sample of your work. We would love to look at it. So when a player signs with a team, he knows with some certainty what his role is going to be. He knows I'm going to play second base and that means I have to do double play relays and I have to hit in a spot in the batting order. You have to play baseball basically. And he has done that before for many years. You are doing something new here i mean yeah it's not a complete career change you've been in baseball for decades at this point but

it's a different side of baseball and how much of the job do you know already how much of it could you find out what it would be in advance and how much of it is sort of i'll find out when i get there yeah i think i probably know like two percent or 3% or something like it. You know, I have some sense of like, you know, I'll be working with, you know, AJ and Andy Green and a guy named Don Tricker, who the Padres are bringing over from the New Zealand All Blacks, who's a very interesting guy, like Nick Ennis and Sam Gini. Like I know some of the people that I'll be interacting with. And, you know, I kind of have a general sense of like how front offices work. But I don't necessarily know how San Diego's front office works. And I don't really know exactly what role I'm going to take. But my guess is

the curious, you know, I think the thing that really sold me on taking this Padres job versus, you know, like other teams have approached me in the past, not in the saying that I wouldn't have enjoyed working for them. But like the made me really feel like this was a good fit for me is the curiosity of my co workers and the people that I'll be be working with is I feel like there's going to be an opportunity to probably touch every part of baseball, like whether it's, you know, on field stuff with Andy Green, or if we want to go, you know, look at someone's swing and see if we can like potentially, you know, make a swing changer out of someone who can hit 45 home runs when they hit three in the minor leagues, or if we want to, you know, go find some, some guy in the draft who, you know,

whether it's spin rate or whatever the new thing happens to be in the draft go find some interesting guy in the 15th round or if it's you know we want to sign a minor league free agent or claim a guy on waivers i think like player development is really interesting to me player acquisition obviously is something i've written about for a while and somewhat familiar with but at the same time getting new tools to kind of you know play around with and say like you know i've been writing about why this you know this particular free agent might be a really good signing, or this guy might be a guy to avoid. But at the same time, there's all this data that I don't have access to. And so let's find out, you know, what the scouting reports say, what his work ethic is, you know,

what the non public stat cast numbers say, you know, like, let's find out that side of the game and see if I can, you know, kind of make better recommendations for acquisitions and development. And so my hope would be that like, you know, our department, not necessarily me specifically, but our goal is to really build out a, you know, world-class research and development department in San Diego. Hopefully our department touches every side of baseball, you know, from short season ball all the way up to the major leagues. Yeah.

So take me through the decision making. I know this is something you've talked with Carson a lot about in Fan Crafts Audio, just how to make decisions about everyday life, shopping for groceries, whatever. This is not an everyday decision, obviously, but what sort of factors were you weighing? Because I don't know whether you, when you first got into baseball writing, whether it was your primary goal at that time to work for a team, but obviously it hasn't necessarily been your primary goal lately. You've had opportunities before and you have a family, you like where you live, you like fan graphs. So what were the, did you make a pros and cons list? Like how did you decide to do this? Yeah. I mean, it was, I don't know if AJ will love me telling the story, but I'll tell it anyway uh so the first time he called this off season uh i had just published a post like five

minutes beforehand or 10 minutes beforehand and it wasn't about the padres but in the post i referenced to like the matt campia's money grundahl trade and like said something along the lines of you know like that's the kind of trade that some whatever team i was talking about that day shouldn't be making or something and then like i'm taking my kid to preschool i think i just dropped off my son at preschool and the phone rings and it's i see it's aj prowler and i was like i'm probably gonna get yelled at for this post i just published like not that i like you know aj has never called and yelled at me about a post this isn't something he's historically done but i was like i don't i'm not really in the mood to get lectured on this so i didn't answer his call i mean it wasn't like i

was talking to call i was also still at my kid's preschool. I didn't want, you know, like, but then he called back the next day and we chatted and he just kind of asked, you know, if I would be interested in pursuing an opportunity, they were looking to build out their R and D department and just, they were just curious kind of where, where I was at. And I think, you know, at that point, because I'd had teams approach me before and I had always just kind of shut them down from day one, like know it just never really advanced all that far you know a few teams called like while i was still like in treatment for getting cancer like you know not like i was getting chemotherapy like fairly close to when i was like and i was like look i might you

know bone marrow transplant in six months i shouldn't take this job now like i just kind of always waved it away and this one just felt like you know just talking to aj and the conversation we had the things he said got me excited about entertaining the possibility. And so like the first thing I did, like after I hung up the phone with AJ is I called David Appelman and was like, Hey, so this just happened. Let's have a chat about where Fangraphs is headed and like where you see the future. And like, you know, it really tried to get a sense of, you know, kind of what he, make sure he wanted to keep me on staff. Like he wasn't gonna be excited if I left, you know, that was kind of like the, if I'm giving him an opportunity to

get rid of me, I wanted him to know he could take it and he did not want to take it. So, you know, like I had to weigh that conversation and really kind of figure out what Fangraphs would be able to do without me. Not that, you know, obviously there's a lot of other talented people on staff, but I, you know, I'm managing editor. I have like a fairly involved role in the site. And so that was, that was a big part of it really is like pretty much when any other team had approached me before, I was just not willing to consider leaving Fangraphs. I was just too attached, not in an unhealthy way, but just felt so involved. You know, I was the first full-time employee Apple had ever hired. Like this was my home in a lot of ways. And so I really had to

work through the process of like, am I willing to consider leaving Fangraphs? And then once I got to the point that I was like, you know what, I think I'm at least willing to think about it. I don't know if I'm willing to do it, but I'm willing to think about it. Then I called them back and was like, yeah, you know, I'll go along in the process. I'll interview with you guys. Started talking to my wife about, you know, what our life would look like. Because right now, you know, I work from home. I take my kid to preschool every morning. I pick my kid up from preschool. I make her dinner. I buy groceries.

Like, I do a lot of homemaking type things. And so I had to talk to the Padres and say, like, look, you know, my dad had a stroke this summer. And they're moving down here to be closer to us so that we can help out. Like, I need to be able to maintain some semblance of this life that I currently have. And they were extraordinarily willing to, you know, like, I'm going to be working more. There's no question. Anyone who works in baseball operations works more than people who are public baseball writers, right? Like my hours are going up. But they were willing to kind of make it work for me and say, you know, we really want you to work for for our staff. And how do we make this something that will work for you and work for us. And once I saw, you know, kind of how committed

they were to really building out a real research and development department where it wasn't just going to be me, like that was one of my concerns going in. It's like, if it's just me and I get the call at all hours of the day of like, we're considering this trade, it's 2am, get up. Like, that's not great. And so once they, you know, they showed that they were committed, like, we're going to build a real department here. You're going to have co-workers that you're going to enjoy working with and, you know, people who can, you know, step up if it's your kid's birthday and you can't take the phone call, that's fine. We'll call this other person. And so once they kind of made it clear that I was going to have some good, you know, step up if it's your kid's birthday and you can't take the phone call, that's fine. We'll call this other person. And so once they kind of made it clear that I was going to have

some good, you know, maintain some quality of life, then it was something my wife and I, you know, talked through and said, is this something that, you know, I would want to do and would be good for us. And once, once she got on board, I started really getting excited about it. And, you know, I had really good interactions with the staff when I had a two hour conversation with Andy Green and a few others. You know, he wasn't the only one in the interview, but I didn't anticipate that I would. You know, I've had interactions with major league managers before. And I think like the ones that I've had interactions with weren't as curious and as interested in this side of the game as Andy is.

And so like getting to work with him was really exciting. And the idea of like being able to go into the major league manager's office and say, here's what I believe and having him like not just listen to me, but potentially act on it. It was like really exciting and got me starting to think of like, this is maybe not an opportunity. I should just wave away. And San Diego, of course, is a hellhole. No one wants to live there.

So probably. Yeah, my pitch when I have called friends to see if they would want to come with me was like, hey, do you want to live on the beach? That's basically the line one. Yeah, my pitch when I have called friends to see if they would want to come with me was like, hey, do you want to live on the beach? That's basically the line one. Yeah, right. But you'll be spending some time there, I would imagine, but you won't necessarily be there full time. I guess you'll find some way to kind of spend time in both places or work remotely. in both places or work remotely? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, my family is going to stay here in Oregon and I'm going to work in San Diego and here in Bend. So we'll see how to make it work.

We don't have an exact plan of, you know, like number of days I'm going to be in the office. But a lot of this stuff we can do by phone, we can do by email, you know, whatever it may be. I think there's some stuff I can do remotely. We're definitely going to have a team in San Diego in the office. We don't exactly know what that will look like,

but I'll be there some, I'll be in Oregon some, I'll be in Phoenix for a good chunk of spring training. And I think we'll just figure it out. I think that's part of the, like, how much do you know is like, I'm going in on some faith that like, you know, they understand that I do have a child and I do have some parents who are going to need some help. And so like, they're not looking to, you know, destroy my life, I don't believe. And so I'm going in with some trust that they, you know, they want this to be good for both of us. And I think we'll figure out how to make it work. what is the run expectancy table say in this situation or who's our 13th best prospect or something like that. I would imagine there's not much of that and that it's more just sort of

seeing if you can get along with people and conduct yourself in an intelligent way. But was there any, like, did you study for it? Was there any way to prepare? What did you do? Yeah. So, I mean, I think like, you know, I was aware of like what the padre's kind of plan was and they spent 120 million dollars in latin america a couple years ago and like i had heard the name adrian morjohn but like i couldn't have told you anything about him other than like ben badler said this guy was good and they gave him a lot of money right so like i kind of wanted to familiarize myself with the organization in a way that i wasn't just someone who's trying to cover all 30 teams and so I probably spent a couple of weeks like really trying to like watch video, you know, dig through StatCast stuff, like kind of look through like asset valuation models, figure out who are some guys in this organization that

I really like, where if they were like, if I came into the interview, and they said, Hey, you know, what should we do? Who should we play here? I wanted to have some answers and kind of, you know, have a plan to pitch to say, like, you know, if I was the grand poobah, obviously I'm not, but like, this is what I would do. And these were players I would go after. And so, you know, I spent a lot of time, like, so I'll be honest, I had never heard of this kid named Michelle Baez before, like I started this interview process. And for people who aren't like big prospect towns, he's not a household name yet, but this is a six, eight kid. They signed out of Cuba a few years ago who throws 98 miles an hour and by the way ran an 85 to 8 strikeout to walk ratio in his pro debut last year like this is a pretty exciting

player right and like these are the kinds of guys that I was like I should have some information on and like if they bring up the name Michelle Baez I shouldn't be like who's that let me go pull up fangrass and like find out who you're talking about text Langenhagen or something yeah right exactly hold on I gotta go get a Kato call. So I definitely didn't want to come off as like the guy who just needed my computer with me all the time. So I probably spent, it was like basically a second part-time job,

you know, like trying to learn the Padres organization in a way that I didn't know it beforehand. And that was also part of why I was willing to take this job is there's just so many exciting players. And, you know, like obviously every team in the rebuilding process will tell you how good their farm system is and like how excited they are for

the future but i'm not one of those people who will tell you how excited i am about the padre's future yeah is uh i i think we're we're not that far away from being interesting you're already saying we you haven't even yeah i know i know so yeah so yeah i was gonna ask you about that like how much the identity of the team mattered to you compared to, say, your salary and the latitude that you'll be afforded in the job and working from home and all of that. Because a major league team is a major league team and there are only 30 of those. But I feel like for me, there might be an added appeal to joining a team in the Padres position. Never won a World Series, hasn't made the playoffs in a while. Obviously, they've laid a lot of the groundwork to get good again already, but you

still get to sort of start close to the ground floor and in theory, ride the elevator all the way up, which seems like it might be more rewarding in certain ways than joining a team that's already at the top. Yeah. I mean mean the thing i love is like if you want to do a cost benefit analysis of like the benefit right is like if i come in and then we win in a couple of years i can be like of course that was me of course i did all of that like i get all the credit for helping like turn this team around and turn this franchise around if we're bad we were bad before i got there like that's not my fault like i couldn't do anything about this we were just headed for a wall anyway. So like the benefits of like if we win versus the cost of if we lose are fantastic.

So I think the main thing that really drew me to the Padres was that there are a lot of really good people in this organization who don't see baseball the way that I see it. And so like, you know, there are teams out there who kind of run their organizations

in a way that like Fangraphs is approved of. Or, you know, like we say, like we like these general transactions. We like the way you do things. You know, like working for one of those teams, I'm not saying I would never consider it or I would have never considered it. But it's, I think, a little less interesting to me

to go work with people who would be like, yep, here's our asset valuation model. And we have a, you know, surplus value calculator. And when the trade offer comes in, we stick it into a spreadsheet and it comes up. Plus we make the trade. Like, like you know i might fit in there uh but i don't know that i would necessarily learn as much from a bunch of guys who you know see the game very differently and like there's no question the padres are a scout forward organization and uh that's the side of the

game that i don't know very well and i it's not that i think that what they say is you know 100 right all the time or what i say is 100 not right all the time, or what I say is 100% not right all the time. But I'm actually looking forward to those disagreements and those places where we can say, like, I really like this guy, and you don't like that guy, let's figure out why. And let's figure out not just who's right or who's wrong. But is there things we can learn from each other in order to get to a, you know, a common ground where we both say, like, from both sides of things, we think that this is kind of the true picture.

And, you know, I think, you know, like, one of the things that came up in the interview process was like, am I a quant? Am I going to like build these models? Like, you know, there's all these teams who have directors of decision sciences with their seven PhDs and they're doing, you know, all kinds of crazy things with mathematical models. I'm not going to do any of that. Like, that's not me. I'm not a quant. And I was upfront with that. I was like, my, my reality is I think as I'm a communicator and I can understand quants to some degree, not entirely, but to some degree, and I can hopefully take what they say and turn it into language that people who aren't comfortable with quant language can digest. And so having the

opportunity to really kind of build that department who can do those kinds of things, bridge that gap, be that communicator role, that's a lot more interesting to me than necessarily being like the 13th guy in a room saying, you know, this guy's worth $75 million and he's only going to cost 40. Go sign him. Yeah. I was going to ask you about that because it does seem to me as if this hiring, it's pretty emblematic of a trend, maybe a larger trend that's happening in front office hiring in the types of people maybe that are being plucked off the internet. Because it used to be certainly to get the sort of job that you are starting here, you really did have to be that kind of quant. You had to be Keith Wilner, James Click, Dan Fox, Dan Turkenkopf, someone like that who is

invented Vorp or whatever. You have to have that skill set. And maybe that was partially because it would be like a one-person department. So you kind of needed the person who could do everything. And now it does seem as if that's changing. I mean, even just Fangraphs alone has lost August Fagerson, for instance, or Corinne Landry, who's with the Phillies now. And they were both great writers, great communicators, great analysts, but not really the kind of people who were doing crazy queries that a Dan Fox or a Keith Wilner would have been doing in their work. And I think for a team to entrust you with this role, I think you're a great fit for it. But I don't know whether all that long ago teams would have seen you as a great fit for it because of that different skill set. I mean, I guess you've had offers before so in that sense maybe not but it does seem as if things have changed in a way that makes teams attracted not to like the most hardcore of the hardcore stat head exclusively or to the most hardcore scouty person who's been going to games minor league games every day for years the the kevin goldstein type of person but but you who's

kind of in in a different, but is very well equipped to do the job that teams need someone to do now. I think the shift really started to begin a couple of years ago where the research and development departments or the analytics department, I guess as they used to be called, maybe even five years ago, were almost exclusively about player acquisition. They were involved in waiver claims, trade acquisitions, free agent signings, the draft to some extent, depending you know aggressive your team was and using this stuff but it was almost all on that side of things that you know there were teams like the cardinals who were doing player development stuff differently but that wasn't necessarily like they were using analytics

in that way but it wasn't necessarily driven by the r&d department and that really feels like that has shifted where over the last few years obviously now all those public information players are saying the words launch angle and exit velocity and having guys like daniel murphy preaching like do you go to fangraphs bro like you know like the the players on the field have changed and their openness to this has changed like i remember like when the astros started shifting like crazy and their players had like an open revolt yes right like they were basically like we hate this we think this is terrible we don't want to pitch for you. We don't want to play for you. We want the coaches to be fired. We just think this is the worst thing ever. And now, there's still players who don't like shifting, but the kind of push from the field, I think, has been much more towards, can you help me get better? Can you make

me like that guy? Can I become Justin Turner? Can you teach me a cutter? Can you show me how to be Charlie Morton? Like, it feels like there's a lot more interest in that kind of analysis being communicated, not just to major league players, but minor league players, coaching staff, you know, special assistants, all those guys were involved with touching the players, helping them with their actual physical skills, where, you know, the quants can absolutely, you know, there's no question necessary. There's a reason they were the first guys in the room, right? Because you can't do this without the quants. Our department's absolutely going to have some quants because we need those tools.

But at the same time, I think there's become an opportunity to not just focus on the acquisition side of things, but to focus on the development side of things, to focus on making players better. And I think that's part of the job that really got me excited is, you know, are there players in the Padres organization that I can run some analysis for presented to the coaches or the players in a specific way and say, like, this could turn you from what you are into this and help them and just watch them every day and watch them make those adjustments. And obviously, they're going to be the ones who have to do the hard work. But can we participate in helping these guys become something they aren't? You know,

I think like Brian Dozier, right, is a guy that like three or four home runs the minor leagues, and now he's seeing 45 in the major leagues. Like, how did that happen? And can we recreate that? And I think that's really exciting for me. Yeah. Do you think as you prepare to staff up here, do you think the job of filling out an R&D department for a major league team has gotten harder, more competitive?

Every single team has one at this point. And, you know, there was a point 10 years ago or whenever, when you could have assembled a very strong MLB R and D department, just from people who were publicly writing on the internet. That's not as easy to do now. I'm sure that the interest is still probably just as strong and I'm sure there are just as many applicants as there used to be, but maybe the candidates are a little less obvious or, or freely available than they once were. I think that's absolutely true.

And like, you know, I called a bunch of my friends in the game and I was like, how do you want to, how do you, how does the beach sound to you? And like, you know,

a lot of them already have really good gigs and a lot of them already have, you know, the GM's ear in their current organization and they already have, you know, impactful jobs that they feel fulfilled in. It's not like, you know, even recently a couple of years ago,

I would have friends who were like, you know, we're doing great work and then we just throw it in the trash. We just find we just might as well just shred it the moment it comes out of the printer, because no one's looking at this. And that's not the case anymore. Even in the organizations that aren't considered the most progressive, like the good work is being done, and it's being seen, it's being used. And so I think a lot of people out there have really fulfilling, rewarding jobs in other organizations, it's harder to get them to leave teams don't want to lose lose those guys anymore. So like there, we've seen kind of what we call title

inflation in baseball, where it's like, oh, good, you were an analyst for six months. Now you're senior director, you know, like, it's getting harder to get guys to come. But I do think the pool of people, it might be less obvious, but it's still there. I mean, there's guys who, you know, maybe would have gone to Apple or Google or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, you know, and now they're like, oh, maybe I'll go work Twitter or whatever, you know, and now they're like, oh, maybe I'll go work in baseball is, you know, I think also baseball's done, at least started the shift towards, it doesn't just have to be white guys. And so, you know, I think that opening up the application pool to people with diverse experiences, you know, different backgrounds,

different ideas, that helps as well, right? If you're not just hiring white guys who went to Harvard, you've got more people to choose from. And so I do think it's maybe a little harder than it used to be of just like, let's go to Fangraphs, let's go to BP, let's just go hire whoever they hired six months ago and like, use them as a recruiting tool. Like that's not quite as easy as it used to be. But I still think there's a lot of, you know, really talented, really smart people out there who want to do good work. And I'm pretty confident we're going to, we're going to have a pretty great department in San Diego. Yeah, you didn't go to Harvard. So they're really- I did not go to Harvard.

Scraping the barrel here. UNC Williamsboro is the Harvard of the Southeast, I've heard. Yeah. So I think a lot of people probably imagine the moment when you start working for a baseball team. It's like the men in black orientation day where suddenly you find out that you were wrong about everything. And there are these super advanced stats that you never knew existed. And I wrote about my first day as an intern and how I found out about framing on day one. And so I kind of did have that experience. I don't know if that's typical, but are you expecting that sort of experience? Have you had that sort of experience where they just kind of hand you the keys and say,

here's everything we know, just dive in? Because that would be just a weeks of kind of reading and absorbing everything. Right. So they haven't handed me the keys yet. So I haven't seen what they have. So I'm kind of hoping that I get in there and be like, this is amazing. I don't know that I would say I'm expecting it in the sense of like, you know, I've been connected with enough people who've worked in organizations that are going to tell me like their highest trade secrets. And, you know, I'm not asking them for like leaked information, but I feel like I have an okay idea of what teams are kind of trying to do these days. I don't necessarily know the

results of it, but at least kind of what the direction they're headed in. So I don't know if I'm expecting to be like, aha, everything I knew was wrong, but I do hope there's things that I get in there. And it's like, man, I've been asking that question for five years. I didn't have the tools to have the answer. And now I can finally answer this question. That's awesome. And I think that's really what I'm looking forward to is like also just like questions I didn't know I should have asked. You know, like there's going to be things that like people have been around the game

for 30 years. Be like, I just know this because I've watched so many baseball games and it's not something that would have ever occurred to me. Like I remember this is probably 10 or 15 years ago, but like the first time someone told me that like middle infielders and third baseman couldn't throw left-handed i was like oh yeah i've never seen a lot but it just never occurred to me that like there weren't any left-handed shortstops and then i like thought about the spin and like why it wouldn't work but like that was just something that like when i was 23 or whatever i just never put it together it's like those are the kinds of things that i imagine

being around people who are baseball lifers like you know logan white works for the for the padres I'm excited to like spend time with him and just be like, okay, Logan, what did you see in Clayton Kershaw when he was 17 that made you want to take the guy? And like, you know, like I think that's the kind of thing that I'm really excited for, like my aha moment with those guys. So not that you needed any vindication, I wouldn't say you've been very successful in your field, but is there any part of you that thinks like to every Twitter egg who has ever told you, you know, nothing about baseball. Hey, I work for a baseball team now. So a baseball team thinks I know something like that. Maybe you've moved past that stage where like getting the seal of approval from an MLB team means something to your sense of self-worth.

But has that crossed your mind? I mean, I would hope I was more mature than like rubbing it in all the Twitter eggs. Yeah, that should be your last public act. Just reply to everyone who's ever criticized you. They might like, this might be the shortest employment in baseball history if I'm like, told you so, Twitter eggs. Yeah, I don't think I'm going to do that. But I think, you know, like, so you'd like to think like, oh, you're more mature than that. You're past that. You know, you don't need validation from people you've never known. But I think like the reality is like, it felt nice to have a team call and kind of not recruit

me, but like, say, we would like you to be interested in this position. We're interested in you being interested in this position. Like, there was no question that that did something for my ego. It was like, oh, yeah, there's teams out there who think I could add value to their organization. That's, that's a really nice feeling. And so I don't necessarily know that I would consider it validation. I think I probably got more validation out of like Corinne and August and those people coming on, you know, like Corinne, you know, and August, like, you know, these weren't

necessarily like household names. Corinne had done some really good stuff for some affiliates blogs. August had written for our community blog, but I don't think either of them necessarily saw like a career path to working for a team before they started at Fangraphs. And so to be able to open that door, I think that was probably more personally validating. But I think from like an ego standpoint,

I would be lying if I wasn't going to say like, yeah, a team calling and asking you to apply for a position. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Well, so you've made a living publicly expressing your opinions for your entire adult life, essentially, sometimes very strongly. And so that's going to change. So I'm already thinking of that in a way that I haven't when I've had you

on podcasts before. I haven't, well, do I have to dance around this question? I mean, there are things I would ask you right now that I'm not going to ask you because I know you can't answer them or you can't answer them. Let me guess. One of them involves a left-handed first baseman with like wildly divergent standing reports? Possibly. Possibly. Yeah. I mean, there are things I could ask you right now that either you would have to say, I can't talk about that, or you would talk about it and then you would not actually end up getting this job, which would be sad. Right. up getting this job, which would be sad. But I mean, do you expect that to be at all a challenge for you, an adjustment for you to go from just being a public figure to having an important part of your job being the fact that no one knows what you're doing? Yeah. I mean, I think that will

definitely be an adjustment in the sense of like, I've really enjoyed, I think one of the things that I liked doing at Panagraphs the most was putting out unfully fleshed ideas out there and just saying, here's a thought I had last night. This could be wildly wrong. Let's see what everyone else thinks about it. And then smarter people than me are like, actually, it's this. And learning from that kind of feedback loop that the baseball community has has been really valuable for me. So I'm going to miss that, no question. And I think that part is going to be one of the things that I'm going to have to realize how to do that almost within our group and like come up with my own feedback loop internally is like I can still work through this process just with the people that are already there and the people that I'm working with. But I'm going to miss the, you know, the ability to put something out on Twitter and have a lot of really great people who know a lot.

You know, like maybe I can just like hire Alan Nathan or something. But like, you know, to have Alan Nathan weigh in on the physics article, like that's really super valuable. And so I think there's, there's going to be part of that, that I, I will really miss. Yeah. But I do think, you know, one of the things that I brought up kind of in the interview is I told them I'm not a meek person. It's not in my personality to be like a wallflower and just to kind of hang out in the corner. I was like, you know, if, if you put me in a room and you asked for my opinion, you're going to get it.

And they were okay with that. And so I think that was one of the main criteria for like, is this a good fit for both of us? It's like, are you okay with me telling you something that you think is insane? And, you know, I'll hopefully have some data to back it up and hopefully you'll realize that I'm not like a total crazy person,

but I'm pretty sure we're going to see some things in a different way and that needs to be okay. And I think not only was that okay, that's what they were looking for. They wanted someone else to come in and give a different perspective and to, you know, to be willing to not just back down when challenged. And I told them that that is not my history. I don't necessarily just say, well, someone else thinks I'm wrong. So therefore I must be wrong.

I'm going to stand my ground. And I think that that was appealing to both of us. Yeah. I would pay for a live feed of the first draft room that you're a part of i feel like yeah they did ask about like the draft and i told them straight up i was like you know certain certainly an area that i have interest in but not something like i couldn't tell you who the number one pick in the draft is going to be right now like it's just not something that i covered at fangraphs all that extensively and so my hope is that I learn far more from them than they have to learn from me, at least for the next little while, because the draft is something that I think it's a big animal to tackle.

And I don't feel prepared at the moment to come in and tell them who to start taking. Yeah, I think I would really miss that interaction with readers and listeners. It's not universally pleasant and positive, but at least in my case, it has been overwhelmingly so. And that's a, you know, it's a different form of validation, I guess, in having people read you and listen to you and tell you they like your stuff. And it's just kind of positive reinforcement constantly. You write something, it comes out, people respond to it. And most of the comments hopefully are positive and make you feel good about yourself. And then there's one that's negative that ruins

the entire thing. But still, there's something to be said for that. And even just like the year or so that I was an intern, and I hadn't even been writing for very long at that point, but it was tough to be cut off from that kind of fire hose of people appreciating what you do in some form, hopefully. So I guess you have to find new ways to derive that kind of satisfaction. Maybe you make a recommendation and the team signs a player and then you watch that player progress. I mean, that's satisfying in a different way, obviously. I would say you and I have had very different experiences of ratios of positive to negative. I would say like the one bad bad comment i want to go work for the rigor this sounds awesome uh i think like the example i always don't have comments like that's true right that's the that's the main thing you

know when people are like oh does like negative commentary or like criticism affect you and i was like you know what like when i announced i had leukemia like the first 400 comments were like so unbelievably encouraging and then it just went to hell like it was just like the last couple hundred were just unbelievably awful and i was like that's basically the internet for you is you can announce you have cancer and people will figure out a way to turn that into a criticism of your baseball writing so uh you know i won't necessarily miss that part but at the same time you just kind of like uh the 400 comments that were nice and you know like i think there's no question that like i've made friends friends who I've never met, who I've only interacted with on Twitter or all they interacted with on Slack or email or whatever, like having that community of support and, you

know, people who quite frankly allowed me to get here. Like, there's no question when we talk about like the process outcome kind of matrix that we like to quote all the time. Like I'm in that like really lucky outcome category of like getting to do this for this long and now having this opportunity, like, you know, I've worked hard, but a lot of people have worked hard and haven't ended up where I have. I've been very fortunate. And so, you know, I'm going to certainly miss having kind of the opportunity to interact with people who I won't get to interact with as much, at least not publicly. And I think that's going to be something that I'll just have to adjust to. And it's part of the part of the cost of going

behind the wall. You've mentioned you've been doing this for a long time and it's true. I think that's going to be something that I'll just have to adjust to. And it's part of the cost of going behind the wall. You mentioned you've been doing this for a long time. And it's true. I think you're only about five years older than I am maybe. But it seems like you've been doing this for far, far, far longer than I have. Because I started later in life. And you started blogging and posting in forums as like a prepubescent person possibly. I was 13, I think. I didn't really have a lot of friends who are really into baseball and i thought you

were just gonna stop after i didn't have a lot of friends i didn't have a lot of friends yes also true so i found like this usenet news group forum back in like 93 or 94 and i started posting on alt baseball seattle mariners and rec sport baseball and rec sport baseball is where baseball prospectus was born out of like this was Dave Pease like I have like actual memories were arguing about Ken Griffey Jr's range factor with Dave Pease in 1994 and this is like a you know 25 years later I'm still arguing about Ken Griffey Jr's range factor or Omar Vizquel's range factor I guess these days so yeah i've been you know i think my first actual published job was with a strike called strike3.com that was run by a bunch of mariner fans uh getting michael cox and derrick zumstag worked there and so i think that was like

98 or 99 so i'd been 18 years old at that point you read around then too right yeah yeah from strike three yeah yeah i went to work with randy gizzarelli and do prospect stuff and then we like uss mariner started as like before there were blogs derrick and jason michael barker and i would just trade emails and this guy who used to be the sports editor for the seattle times uh chuck nelson was like or chuck taylor chuck something sorry chuck can't remember your name 15 years later uh he was like i'll just edit all your emails put them in a readable format and post them on a website and that that's how USS Meritor started. And like that was before there was blogger.com. And so yeah, I mean, I've been doing this for like 20 years, it's definitely gonna feel weird to not be putting my words out there publicly. And it definitely is. I feel like a little bit of like the old guy in

the room sometimes, especially like there's so many like you're reading through these applications to replace me so many people who know so much more than i did when i was their age and it's like i'm actually kind of a little bit excited to get out of their way and give one of them an opportunity to do some awesome stuff that i wouldn't know to do because i'm an old guy with a kid who's like kind of stuck in my ways in some sense and like to let the next generation of baseball writers take over i think is actually something i'm excited for. And you're not afraid to express opinions. And I admire that about you, that you will make predictions and you will state your opinions. And your record is out there for people to hold over your head for years and years if they want to. Six or more still comes up.

So how have you, I mean, obviously everyone improves dramatically as a writer from age 13 to 35 or whatever. But how have you changed your tone or how have you seen the tone of just the internet baseball community as a whole evolve over this period? I mean, I don't think there's any question that I had a good 10 year run as just like not a really good person on the internet. Like, you know, 13 to 25 or whatever it was,

like I was just kind of a dick. And, you know, anyone who read my writing back then, I apologize for coming off as like the smarmy self-important but uh you know i was smarmy and self-important and like i was being who i was and so the honesty was not the best policy in my case but i do think you know like having a family having a child has hopefully matured time has matured me i like i've really become wary of sarcasm and snark uh which was like you know the the trade skill to have in the early 2000s. Like the only way to write about baseball on the internet back then was like,

make fun of things. And that's, you know, that's what we did for a long time is because we just felt like everything was so wrong and so backwards. The only way to gain traction was to mock it. And so I think now I have kind of like a little bit of a reflexive anti-mocking behavior, like when a lot of, you know, like things happen that I don't necessarily agree with. I mean, you know, I'm still willing to be like, I don't like this trade or I don't like this free agent signing. But instead of thinking that the people who are doing it are just, you know, wrong or stupid or out to lunch, generally try and be like, why would they do this? And like, try to be a little bit more curious. And hopefully that curiosity has helped me develop into a better writer and a more interesting writer and someone who's capable

of working in a front office instead of just making fun of everything around me. And I would say like, to people who want to do this as a career, you know, whether it's working for a team or working in baseball, the sooner you can put your snark aside, the better. Like I wished I would have retired my sarcasm a long time before I did. You know, there's a lot of things I look back and regret and be like, man, I didn't know what I was talking about there. And I'm so confident that I was right. And I was totally wrong. And a little bit of humility would have done me some real good at that point. The sooner you can kind of start asking questions instead of making statements. And like, you know, there's a reality of baseball traffic that, you know, when you're

an ad based business, you kind of need to publish headlines that will get people to click on them. And you can't just have a mealy mouth. Like, I don't know whether this is good or not. We'll find out in five years. Like no one wants to read that. Right. So like you do have to serve the audience a little bit, but I think like try to find a way to serve the audience by including enough questions and not like both sides of them. Cause like there isn't always a both sides. Like there wasn't a both sides to the Dansby Swanson trade, right? Like that was just, that was just a bad trade. Like trade like call a bad trade a bad trade but also try to understand like what happened why did this come to pass and like don't just say like this person's

an idiot for doing things like billy bean traded josh donaldson like everyone smart people do dumb things and like you know everyone has moves they regret like you know why did albert pools go in the 13th round like why can't we tell when you guys are really good why can't we tell that like mike trout is the best player we've ever seen like i think that kind of understanding of how far away we are from really having the answer in general not just us specifically as stat heads but like baseball in general how far we have to go keeps you a little bit more grounded and hopefully as i've gotten older i've been more willing to see like i don't know nearly as much as i thought i did you know know, when it's a cliche, like the older you get, the more you know, you don't know things. And like, I would say like for anyone out there who's trying to try and follow in our

footsteps, try to know what you don't know earlier than I did. The book is not closed on that Josh Donaldson trade. Franklin Barrettos, pretty good. Never know. He could be good. I think they would still undo that if they had a time machine. Probably. Yeah. Well, it's understandable why Snark was kind of the prevailing tone at that time because no one was paying attention to the things that you and others were writing. And so I think there was a natural tendency to kind of lob bombs over this wall because you were being ignored because teams were acting contrary to what everyone was saying. And in some cases that turned out to be correct.

The teams were right and the writers were wrong. And so there's been a dose of humility there. But it's also that there's no outsider nature anymore. The outsiders are the insiders. The teams that, I mean, half of those writers are actually working for baseball teams and the others are read by baseball teams and baseball teams pay attention to them and have all absorbed and internalized the principles that people were talking about at that time. So it's really hard to be as snarky and critical now as it used to be because teams are just smarter and they don't make big mistakes and they hire Dave Cameron. Well, that might be one of those big mistakes they're making.

You never know. Possibly. Yeah. Well, what do you think about, this question comes up all the time, the gap between public and private and teams and internet. And it happens every time someone gets hired from the internet. There is this conversation about, is internet baseball analysis doomed and is the gap growing or is it shrinking

do you have any perspective on that i mean i think the gap has maybe shrunk in some ways and also grown in other ways and i don't know if it's bigger or smaller than it used to be i think you know since i don't have so i haven't been on the inside yet right like they haven't handed me the keys to the kingdom so i'm still speaking a little bit as an outsider here i think the gap is smaller than it's ever been or at least like in the last five years this maybe not at this very present moment like maybe it was a little smaller a couple of years ago before you know some of the stat cast stuff came out or whatever but like in this current time frame of the last few years i think the public has dramatically more knowledge about player skills i mean i still remember like when I was writing for USS Mariner,

and I think probably the most famous post I ever did there was the Felix Hernandez open letter, right? Like when Felix wasn't very good, and when I was trying to figure out why he wasn't very good, this was like 2006, right? So this is 10 years ago. I had to sit down and watch all the games on MLB TV and chart them in Excel manually,

and write like pitch one, fastball, 94. Pitch two, fastball, 94 two fastball 94 pitch three fastball 94 hey i see a pattern here right like that's what that's how data collection was 10 years ago and like we didn't have location velocity you know any of this cool stuff that we have now that we just take for granted right and so like i remember when like looking up a minor leaguers ground ball rate on firstinning.com it was like a revelation right like i can now know if a minor leaguers ground ball rate on firstinning.com, it was like a revelation, right? Like I can now know if a minor league pitcher is a ground ball pitcher or a fly ball pitcher. Like we really used to not have a lot of public data.

And I think it can be easy to forget how far we've come in the last decade, where now we have Mike Petriello giving us like crazy inside stat cast stuff and like doing all these articles that are, you know, similar to what teams are doing. And like, there's no question that teams have hired the best of the quants that have come out publicly, and they've hired quants that have never come into the public sphere. And they're doing mathematical models and techniques that probably put them significantly ahead of what they're doing with the data. But I think in terms of having the data and like being able to say some things about, you know, this curveball is this quality of pitch, and this fastball is this quality of pitch. And if you use them in certain sequences, you can get these kinds

of results. And like, I think that the public has a lot more information than we used to have. There's still a lot to be mined. I think the idea that like public baseball information is dead is to me wildly wrong. And I think that the next generation of writers who is going to carry this should be really excited about what they're going to explore and learn and teach baseball teams over the next 20 years. Yeah. I'll be curious if we have you back on in a year or something to ask you the same question again. And I'm like, just kidding. We have all this crazy information. You can all just stop now. Yeah. Because I have talked to people who were on the internet and then they got absorbed into a baseball team and suddenly they're telling

me the gap is bigger than ever. So I don't know. Maybe you'll change your tune. I might have a very different opinion. But as an outsider, at least for a few more days, I do think like there's a lot still. And, you know, like I guess one of the things that the question brings up is like if this gap is so huge and the teams know all this stuff, like why are we even trying? The reality is like the teams are never going to tell us what they know that they don't want us to know.

But that doesn't mean there isn't going to be demand for the best quality information in the public sphere anyway. It's like, even if you're not 100% right, if the alternative is just to let people go back to OPSBI or whatever these like productive outs, like whatever existed before this wave, like that's worse.

So, you know, even if we're not entirely right, we can temper our conclusions a little bit and say like, look, we don't have all the data, we don't have all the information, but with what we have, this is the best we can do. That's still worth doing. Do you miss that sense of possibility of 20 years ago, say when teams were leaving all these obvious advantages on, you know advantages unexploited, and it felt like maybe there were huge discoveries around every corner, and in some cases there actually were. And today it feels a little bit like teams are almost fighting over the scraps,

at least of a certain type of analysis, like the player evaluation type of analysis. As you mentioned, maybe the player development type is completely different and still untapped to a degree but we obviously know a lot more right now we have the ability to look up information that would have seemed impossible at that time do you miss that sort of sense of man there's a lot we don't know and who knows what the next giant discovery will be and you know one day it's day it's, it's like dips and, and FIP and all of these discoveries that just completely revolutionize the way that you think about baseball. And I don't know if that has happened since say framing several years ago. And I don't know if it'll happen again. Maybe it will. But on the other hand, we can also look up all of this stuff that we really, really wanted to be able to look up then. And that is very satisfying too.

Yeah. I mean, I do think like my current, my new job would have been a lot easier if I could just like, Hey, look, the Mariners non-tendered Mike Cameron's, they can sign Randy Wynn. They shouldn't have done that. Let's go sign Mike Cameron. Like that would, that would be great. That would just, I would have all the influence in the world if the teams were still doing that.

That's not happening anymore. So I think, you know, that it will make my job harder in a sense of like all the low-hanging fruit has been picked right and like every team now has an r&d department so it's not that i can just go out there and like sort by era minus fib and go get a bargain on a pitcher like every team is 10 years past that and so you know it really is going to take some work to find out what can we do in san diego that can be competitively different and it you know give us a real advantage over you know teams in the league. And so I think that part of it is exciting and also terrifying, knowing that I'm now competing with 30 other organizations with people way smarter than me who have had a head start on this, who have been doing this longer than I have, who know all the

ins and outs of the data. But I do think whether it's something at the swing level, there's a lot of stuff when it comes to player development that I think could still be the next dips. Even if we talk about launch angle and swing change and all this stuff, I don't think we really know how these guys did it. If I challenge you to say, explain Daniel Murphy, we could sort of do it. We could use words, but I don't think we really know what happened there. And I think on that side of things,

the Benzo Brists and those kinds of guys, how did that happen? I don't think we know that yet. And I wouldn't be shocked if at some point the public figured that stuff out and said, you know, we now know how to take this guy who does this thing, tweak this a little bit and then get significantly better results. And I think that's going to be the kind of thing that we'll be able to look back and be like, if only we had, you know, hit tracker data for 1974, we could go back and we could like fix all these guys. But now going forward, we know, you know, look for this kind of, you know, mental test or, you know, eye ratio or whatever it's going to be that allows us to see that this guy could do this thing physically and allow himself to become something very different than what he currently is. When you look back over the millions

of words you've probably published published are there a few that you most regret writing and a few that you are proudest of writing it doesn't doesn't necessarily have to be a prediction that was right or wrong or though it could be but just uh i don't know a trend you foresaw or just something that turned out to be true or just seemed astute at the time or something that you just think man how did i think that the negative ones are easier to remember because those are the ones that stick with you a lot longer right like the six word people like people still literally bring this up and for people who don't know about this like we used to do organizational rankings on fangraphs where we basically like ranked every

team by like nerdiness and like how advanced and progressive they were and also like their players on the field but like a heavy dose of it was you know like how how many stat guys do they have how much do they listen to the stat guys and like we did these for a few years and at one point you know i got very excited about the jack zarensik regime and you know yeah right for the first year it looked like we weren't crazy and like you know about tony blingino who worked for fangraphs afterwards and obviously i was somewhat friendly with uh had some influence and was making moves that you know like, like trade for Franklin Gutierrez. I think this is outstanding.

So, you know, like we were overly aggressive in ranking the Mariners, I think the sixth best organization in baseball in 90 or 2009 or whatever it was. And then they have not made good sense. So that's one that like, you know, I wish we had not published that. And I wished we had done a better job

of like understanding what we didn't know. It's like, you know, the Giants were doing some really interesting analytical stuff when we call them like the 29th best organization right before they won three world series in five years like that was one of those instances where we should have known what we didn't know and then we stopped doing those probably for the best yeah so i think that's one of those instances where i was like you know that's we had too much hubris at that point and that's specifically i and try to learn from that i do think you know looking back to like you know i mentioned mike cameron adrian beltre like i have long had an appreciation for average-ish hitters who are defensive superstars and arguing that

these guys are among the best players in the game when that was not an accepted point of view and like it's still not entirely an accepted point of view but i think like now that we see like kevin kiermeier and byron buxton and some of these guys starting to get their recognition obviously nolan arenado would be like no one thinks he's a league average hitter even though he's maybe closer to that than rocky fans think but like you know like this kind of like good hitter who's also you know andrelton simmons is like a league average hitter who's a five win player because of what he does in the field like that's the kind of thing that i was writing about 15 years ago that i think has held the test of time doesn't necessarily mean that i had it for the right

reasons or that i had anything figured out but i i think i'm proud of kind of arguing for compensation for those guys and as we've seen you know elvis andrews got 120 million dollar contract and like guys like this who didn't used to get paid like i mentioned like the mariners non-tendered mike cameron coming off a five win season Like the understanding of the value of those players has changed dramatically to where now if you have a, you know, a league average hitter with, you know, some strikeout with a strikeout problem, but he hits some home runs and plays, you know, gold glove center field, that guy's getting $150 million. And for Jason Hayward, he got $181.

Hasn't worked out very well, but he gets, you know, at least recognition of the skill set or what the skill set was anyway. I think that's something that I'm happy about and feel like, oh yeah, there was something that we saw to argue for more pay for these kinds of players. And I'm happy the game has moved in that direction. Well, you're really going to be missed, I think, just not only your ability to find and develop talent, but your own talent. You've just always had a way of expressing yourself very clearly and concisely when writing about complex subjects and tackling these larger trends and kind of the economic perspective that not really a lot of writers are qualified to take. So I'm going to

miss it. I know a lot of people are going to miss it. I remember a few years ago when Rob Nyer like switched websites, he wasn't even stopping writing or anything. He was just going from ESPN to SB Nation or whatever. You were among the many people who were paying tribute to Rob as having been an inspiration. And I'm sure that you have been the Rob Nair equivalent to another generation of young writers and fans. So you've definitely made your mark on the internet and hopefully you will make your mark on the inside of baseball now too. Yeah. Well, thank you for the kind words. I feel like, you know, I have gotten way more out of this than I have given. And, you know, I feel

like I'm, I'm one of the lucky few who has, you know, this has given me a career that I couldn't have dreamed of. And there's no question in my mind that I've been very fortunate and hopefully by helping build Fangraphs into a platform that can do that for other people, that we can have like some kind of lasting legacy of I would love to see Fangraphs become, you know, like 50 years from now, Fangraphs is still cultivating the next idea of what a baseball writer is or, you know, a baseball thinker. And so, you know, I think from my perspective, I've been very lucky to just latch on to the right people at the right time and kind of ride this wave.

And, you know, hopefully, hopefully I'm latching on to the San Diego Padres wave of people at the right time and kind of ride this wave. And, uh, you know, hopefully, hopefully I'm latching onto the San Diego Padres wave of talent at the right time too. And I'll get to like have my Kevin Goldstein moment crying on the field. Yeah. Right. Well, we're going to need someone else to close out Sabre seminar with your, your typical closing Q and a, I don't know, someone's going to have to take over for you. Going to be missed, but, uh, I'm, I'm happy for you that this is working out. It sounds like a really exciting opportunity, and you're going to be great, and they made a great pick, and all of the nice

other things that I could say. Well, thank you. I've enjoyed being... I guess we were never really co-workers, but co-existers in the same space, and look forward to you starting 12 more podcasts and taking over the world.

Right. Well, please, among your first recommendations, please be making a Major League transaction so that I can stop doing... I was so bored by this off-season, I decided to go make things happen myself. I mean, I have resorted to interviewing front office hires at this point for an hour.

So that's how desperate things are. Scraping the bottom of the barrel. All right. Well, it has been a pleasure reading you for years and talking to you for years and talking to you today and good luck. And hopefully we'll have you back on someday when you can no longer say anything interesting. Yeah. I look forward to just declining comment on all questions.

All right. See you, Dave. Thanks, Ben. All right. See you, Dave. Thanks, Ben. All right. I got through that thing without reading any incriminating quotes from Dave's old posts about Eric Hosmer. So I consider that a success. Pretty sure Dave didn't say anything that would make the Padres pull their offer.

You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already done so include Richard Schaefer, Patty O'Connor, Nathan Bodnar, Terry Spencer, and David Cohen. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Our group is almost 7,000 members strong. I think people are getting a little stir-crazy in there, creating memes. There's no baseball to talk about, but it's still a fun place to hang out. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thank you to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Please keep your questions

and comments coming for me and for Jeff. Soon, I'll be back next week. You can email us at podcast at fangraphs.com or send a message through Patreon. I will be back with just one more episode without Jeff later this week. Talk to you then. Padre, oh Padre Please tell me how such things can be Padre, oh, pray, pray for my love and me.