Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1243: Scoreboard!

Episode Date: July 13, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Daniel Descalso, Alex Blandino, and the ongoing onslaught of position-player pitchers, Jacob deGrom‘s updated WAR vs. wins status, Kyle Schwarber‘s two-strike bunting, the death-ray potential of the Rays’ proposed stadium, Jordan Hicks and Bud Norris, and two baseball blobs, then (31:17) talk to Seattle Mariners senior marketing director […]

Ocean blue and foaming white Surround the body of my flight As I flew out of sight You were turning in the stars And I know what it means to you And I know what it means to me And I know what it means to me. And I know how it feels to be. Burned by the sun, the sun. I love the sun. Hello and welcome to episode 1243 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought

to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. How are you? How are you? I asked first. Well, I'm well.

You're well. Usually one of us speaks for the other, so we're both doing just fine. Just on this slog toward death. And in this distraction, we will be joined by the Mariners Senior Director of Marketing, Greg Green, and also Mariners Director of Marketing, Mandy Lincoln, to talk about fan engagement and scoreboards, specifically the make some noise decibel meter that pops up on scoreboards in ballparks around the country. Before we get to that segment, we will have some banter. I'm sure yesterday there were three position players

who took the mound two of them in the same game one of them in the fourth inning uh so all kinds of things that weren't supposed to be happening happened yesterday i think uh we had alex blandino come out for the reds he threw a very jiffable knuckleball that got a swinging strike blandino actually struck out two batters in his appearance. It was a 19-4 loss. Just after we were talking yesterday on the email show about how many position players have a good knuckleball or could fake a good knuckleball, Blandino comes out and he got a good one, clearly. Yeah, I think it would not be a coincidence if one of our upcoming guests were one Alex Blandino of the Cincinnati Reds to talk about this possibility. I don't know. I haven't read about his knuckleball, and I've only seen the one,

but it looked very good. He struck out Brandon Guyer. He struck out Roberto Perez in the same inning, so that's pretty good. He's not the first position player to strike out multiple batters in an inning. J.D. Davis did that last year for the Astros, but also for the Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks lost the game 19-2.

In that game, Daniel Descalso came into pitch in the fourth inning. Alex Avila came into pitch in the fourth inning alex avila came into pitch in the seventh inning jeff mathis played second base in that game for some reason jeff mathis also had recently pitched i saw a funny quote so uh we've we've seen the numbers we've talked about the numbers where position players pitching their era isn't actually as bad as you'd think for people who are terrible and i'll just read read here from a zach buchanan article at the athletic this is the lead as rocky's star nolan arenado dug into the right side batter's box for his fourth inning plate appearance he realized he was nervous his heart was pounding

the opposing pitcher was someone he'd never faced and he was a former teammate to boot it was diamondbacks infielder daniel descalzo quote i was tripping out arenado said he was smiling at me so i think one of the things to keep in mind when you were looking at these numbers, I've seen, we've talked before and I've seen it on Twitter, people asking who's worse, position players pitching or pitchers hitting? But something to understand is that when pitchers are hitting, they're doing so when the game is presumably still in question. There is reason to be competitive.

There is competition. Whereas when position players are on the mound, the game is presumably still in question there is reason to be competitive there is competition whereas when position players are on the mound the game's over and it's just weird no one's really comfortable and i think that barring appearances like jesus sucre just the other week generally no one really cares anymore when position players come in and it's just kind of an uncomfortable experience for everybody so anyway daniel disc Descalso faced Nolan Arenado in that game. Descalso allowed two home runs, including one to the opposing pitcher. He was not a good game for the Diamondbacks, but the Diamondbacks had a stretch there where they had three consecutive position players pitching. They were the team, I should say, that had three consecutive position player pitching appearances.

That was Jeff Mathis, Alex Avila, and Daniel Descalso. One thing I will bring up, because I don't know if you have noticed this, but you probably haven't looked at Daniel Descalso, one thing I will bring up Because I don't know if you have noticed this But you probably haven't looked at Daniel Descalso's offensive line yet this season Because why would you? But just in case you were wondering, Daniel Descalso does have a WRC plus of 126 Over 270 plate appearances He's been very good How about that?

Yeah, this was Daniel Descalso's fifth career pitching appearance, I believe And his previous four had been scoreless But this one, he was asked to go, what, two and a third, two and two thirds? He was asked to pitch for quite some time, and it was not scoreless. He gave up a few runs. But you're right. I mean, it's just not really even that conversation worthy, even though we are conversing about it currently, when a position player pitches anymore because it's just become so much more

common even since this podcast started back in 2012 back then it was still a relative rarity for this kind of thing to occur and now we're just seeing position players pitch all the time and we've talked about how it probably makes sense from a win expectancy standpoint to do it even more than teams have done it. So I can see why it's happening. I mean, on the one hand, it's strange because there are more relievers on rosters than ever before. And you'd think that there's less need for position players to pitch. But no, there is more need because the relievers don't go very deep when they come in. And they also don't tend to go on consecutive days as much anymore.

So there is a benefit to throwing these guys out there just as the sacrificial lambs mop up men inning eaters. And it's funny. I think that we're now—Joshian had the numbers in his newsletter. I think this was 29 pitching appearances by position players already this year, which is the second highest total in history. I think the highest total was last year with 32. So we're just at the all-star break here. There have already been 29 and the single season record is 32. So this is among the more visible innovations or direct results of teams, I don't know, getting smarter or operating in ways that maybe lead to wins or help them in certain ways despite appearances.

So it happens so much now that it's not really a novelty unless you come in and you look like Matt Davidson and you look like a legitimately good pitcher or you come in and you look like Alex Blandino and you've got a good knuckleball. So interesting in those cases, but otherwise it's almost routine at this point. saw Daniel Descaso pitched in the fourth inning that was the earliest that any position player had pitched in a game since the Brewers Sal Bando in August of 1979 that was also in the fourth inning so that was quite some time ago and then very relevant to this podcast as a number of people noted the Diamondbacks were the first team to pitch two position players for two plus innings each in the same game since the Pirates pitched twin brothers Johnny and Eddie O'Brien, two innings apiece on July 31, 1956. Johnny O'Brien, we asked him about that, or not about that specifically, but about his pitching career, brief and undistinguished as it was.

There have been 207 players this year with 250 or more plate appearances. Daniel Descalso's 126 WSU Plus ranks him right around the top 50. He is in the same neighborhood as Carlos Correa, Javier Baez, Kyle Schwarber, Anthony Rendon, Wilson Contreras. Daniel Descalso is slugging 484. Huh, that's impressive.

I hope we don't have to forget this. This is definitely one of those things that one would notice One would think that's really weird But it is still impossible to sell It's an article to be written Yeah that's right So Jacob deGrom update

I want to give you one of those After his latest gem Which was what eight innings And was it scoreless or was it one run Against the Phillies One of those he was great Eight scoreless innings it one run against the Phillies? One of those. He was great. Eight scoreless innings.

Yeah, he's been fantastic. His ERA is down to like almost Bob Gibsonian 1968 levels. He's at 168 now. And his old school win-loss record still at 5-4. His wins above replacement now up to 6, 6.0. That's just his pitching war. I think he has some hitting war too. So he has at least a one win above replacement cushion here, probably more.

So if he goes out his next time and actually gets an old-fashioned W, he probably still won't pull even with his war total. So he's got a bit of a buffer here. He'll have to, I guess, win a couple games without being brilliant again to actually pull ahead here. I mean, it's getting to the point where it's kind of conceivable that he could do this over a full season if he is not traded. So right now, Jacob deGrom is the major league leader and starts where he goes at least six innings and allows no more than one run. Of course, he just won eight scoreless innings the other day so that's even better but anyway starts with at least six innings no more than one run jacob degrom oh and i should say also no pitcher win that's the other part of this so jacob degrom has seven of those starts already this season

that's first place justin verlander has five so jacob derom's ERA over those starts is 0.71. That's very good. He is the major league leader in this. This is the category where we've talked about Felix Hernandez and Matt Cain before and is a refresher of just trying to look at the all-time numbers. The all-time record for the number of starts, these starts in a season, is eight.

It's a 10-way tie. Jacob deGrom is one away and we have not yet reached the all-star break. So the record is held by 2014, Jeff Samarja. 2015, Shelby Miller. 2014, Felix Hernandez. 2015, Matt Harvey. 2015, Zach Reke. That's a lot of recent pitchers.

2016, Madison Bumgarner. 1916, Wilbur Cooper. 1963, Roger Craig. 2000, Kevin Brown. 1996, Pedro Astacio. All those pitchers had at least eight starts no win or they went six innings or more one run or less Jacob Bagram went away unbelievable yeah do we need to talk about Kyle Schwarber bunting for hits with two strikes is that uh that seems relevant to this podcast it's so relevant that's the article I'm in the middle of working on

what uh what have you heard maybe you can Well, I have definitely not researched it. All I know is that it happened and it was not the first time that it happened. So that's unusual. What have you found? Because you've actually looked into it, presumably. Has this gone more viral than I realized? I was only tipped off by Grant Brisby on Wednesday that it happened. No, it was big in our Facebook group, but i don't think that represents the uh cross-section of baseball fans as a whole so okay let me uh let me just uh square this way so this season it's hard to look at the it's what matters is not just bunts with two strikes right but also bunt attempts so you need to uh add in missed bunts

and fouled bunts so if i can get all my numbers here in order, there have been this season 14 attempted bunts with two strikes and no runners on base. Oftentimes you'll see pitchers attempt two-strike bunts when they're runners on because pitchers are terrible. That's something we've talked about all the time. So 14 bunt attempts this season by anyone with two strikes and the base is empty six of those bunt attempts have failed to put the ball in play so those are six strikeouts there

have been eight in play bunts with two strikes no runners on four of those have resulted in hits two of those have been by kyle schwarber one by enter in ciarte and one by yulmar sanchez over the pitch tracking era so since 2008 there have been a total of just 26 bunt hits with two strikes nobody on base this season there's been four uh the high is five for 2014 and 2011 anyway there's a two-way tie for first place four such bunt hits d gordon not surprising carlos pena the one of the original bunt against the shifters. Carlos Gomez has three, and Schwarber is already tied for third place, tied with Brett Gardner with two. And Kyle Schwarber has those two bunts in just over two weeks of action.

So he did it to Ross Stripling, and he did it against Will Smith. So I like it. I was looking up the numbers. Will Smith against lefties for his career as a reliever 41 strikeouts and a 270 weighted on base average against kyle schwarber against lefties for his career 37 strikeouts a 276 wobah and of course when schwarber bunted he was in a two strike count which you will smith against kyle schwarber with two strikes you might as well try the bunt and one more thing i will tell you because jerry krasnick just had an interesting article come out on wednesday maybe tuesday i think wednesday

yeah but it was probably tuesday about left-handed hitters uh bunting or or how they deal with facing the shift and one of the things that the players brought up it was what matt carpenter kyle seager and daniel murphy i think it's who we talked to and one of the things they said was that it's not as easy as bunting against the shift because what defenses will do now is they will have the third baseman over there until there are two strikes when they don't anticipate the bunt. So I can tell you, thanks to Baseball Savant and StatCast data, exactly what happened with Schwarber.

When the at-bat began, the third baseman was 101 feet away. When Schwarber swung and missed at the first pitch, the third baseman moved to 108 feet away. This is pretty normal positioning, I would guess. After Schwarber swung and missed at strike two, the third baseman moved to 149 feet away, which is basically where he remained. So the third baseman moved away by another 45 or 50 feet after Schwarber got to a two-strike count. So that was the only real bunting opportunity that Kyle Schwar schwarber had and he seized it because i think let's face it kyle schwarber against will smith into two strike count you're not going to get a hit very likely via any other method so the the risk here was just the embarrassment of going

down on strikes with a bunt attempt instead of going down on strikes with a swing i watched schwarber attempt three swings against smith in the atbat. They were all bad. He looked very bad because Will Smith is very good. So I like it. I applaud the opportunity that he seized. And now you don't have to read the post that I will put up. I will link to it anyway, just out of obligation, just in case get you some clicks. So we haven't gotten a full response yet on the query that we put out about the Ray's proposed ballpark design and the glass exterior and whether it will burn everyone inside because of the sun. I have heard from a few people, though, and I'm sure there will be more responses. But I did want to mention this because we were sent this by a listener named Citar who says, this because we were sent this by a listener named sitar who says just wanted to alert you to this possibly similar issue the vegas sun reflecting off the vidara hotel creates a death ray at the pool that supposedly increases temperatures by at least 20 degrees he sent

me a link to an article business insider 2016 now it says when the Vidara was built in 2008, the staff installed a thin film on the 3,000 glass panes facing the pool to lessen the sunlight's intensity, but it wasn't enough to alleviate the problem. And so evidently the hotel took further steps. They installed umbrellas to protect the guests from the death ray. It's a 57-story building that basically looks like a magnifying glass. It's just like a concave kind of thing, and it focuses the sun. And so it seems as if this problem is not completely corrected. There were Yelp reviews. One in 2016, a guest said,

it's a nice hotel, but the death ray rumors are true. He also posted two photos of burns on his thighs. A spokesperson responded, plenty of shaded areas are available to ensure that our guests remain comfortable and get the amount of sun they prefer. So not the amount of sun that leaves visible burns on your thighs, presumably. And it goes on. The first complaint was from a guest who had burns on his head, and the building's rays also melted a plastic bag that was sitting next to him at the time. Now, this is my favorite part.

It says, a skyscraper in London by the same architect, Raphael Vignoli, shares the same design flaw. Called the walkie-talkie and dubbed the fry scraper, it has melted cars, fried bike seats, and scorched pedestrians, the Telegraph reported in 2015. In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, Vignoli said he anticipated the death rays from both buildings. Quote, I knew this was going to happen, he said of London's skyscraper, but there was a lack of tools or software that could be used to analyze the problem accurately. When it was spotted on a second design iteration, we judged the temperature was going to be about 36 degrees Celsius, but it turned out to be more like 72 degrees Celsius. They are calling it the death ray because if you go there, you might die. It is phenomenal, this thing. He sounds almost proud.

You can't blame him for not taking accountability. Yeah, his buildings, these super weapons are fully operational. I don't know whether he has pursued this design in further buildings, but it doesn't really sound all that upset about it. Anyway, so that is one cautionary tale, I suppose. So I guess they could just rebrand, right, as the Tampa Bay Death Rays, and then it's just part of their model. Yes, exactly. So we did hear from a couple people who have downplayed the risk. And then it's just part of their model. Only certain kinds of light in, in theory, the glass at the stadium should be able to deflect much of the heat and not focus the light into a horrifying death ray, even if that would be a fun play on the team name, just as you said. So he is going to follow up with further information. Also in the Facebook group, a listener named Anthony, who is in engineering school, he says he took a quick poll of both architects and civil engineers on the stadium question.

He says he took a quick poll of both architects and civil engineers on the stadium question. The architects said it's possible to have multi-paned glass or treated glass panes that would bounce the sun's rays or filter them out, but it would be incredibly expensive. The civil engineers said they could not use glass at all, but rather a PTFE, polytetrafluoroethylene membrane for the roof. Apparently it wouldn't be totally transparent, but it's a lot lighter than glass and wouldn't have the same greenhouse effect of roasting people inside. That civil engineer evidently worked on SunTrust Park, so he knows something about baseball stadiums.

Anyway, that's where we stand right now. I'm sure we will hear from other listeners, but do not be like Rafael Vignoli, Tampa Bay Rays. You do not want to create a fry scraper or a death ray. 72 degrees Celsius. Yeah. It's not enough to boil your blood, but it's close enough for discomfort, or I guess as discussed, death and melting of cars.

Yes, exactly. My goodness. You said I could anticipate the issue, but we couldn't analyze it properly because of the tools available. So maybe don't create the problem. How big is the ray? I don't know. I don't know.

But yeah, this is a problem. I'm not convinced that it's not a problem. So people convince me that this is not a problem. So people convince me that this is not a problem. I'm sure that we should have asked Michael McClellan, our former guest who is now working for the Rays by now, presumably, and studies physics and atmospheric science. Maybe he is consulted on this. I'll email him. Anyway, that's what I know. I'm sure we'll know more and we will report further. So only other thing I think I wanted to mention is this Cardinals controversy that is going on. We basically ignored the first Cardinals controversy,

which is that Mike Matheny is not talking to Dexter Fowler, and John Mazalek kind of threw Fowler under the bus publicly, which not the greatest move, regardless of what's going on behind the scenes. Anyway, the new thing comes from a Mark Saxon athletic article And it's about Jordan Hicks and Bud Norris Who is the Cardinals' closer So the Cardinals' closer and setup man

Evidently a pretty fraught relationship So the title of this article says Veteran Bud Norris is leading the young cards bullpen With a divisive old school approach. And the quotes in this article are certainly divisive, I suppose you could say. spring training, reminding him to be at meetings on time and publicly calling him out when he is lagging in any of the details a visitor might not notice but other players do. Hicks was asked whether it would be beneficial for him in his future. He said, I have no idea, no comment, which doesn't sound as if he is enjoying this merciless writing. It's not entirely clear what this treatment consists of. He says badgering. He says the harshest way possible of teaching young players. It's sort of unspecific, but it doesn't sound pleasant. And then you have quotes from Matheny sounding like a very old school kind of guy in this article

saying, I think the game has progressively gotten a little softer. Man, it had some teeth not that long ago. So Bud Norris is a guy who has said some things that were kind of questionable in the past. I think most notably when a few years ago he had some vaguely Trumpian comments about ballplayer relations and this is America's game and it's America's pastime. And if you come to this country and make our American dollars, you need to respect the game and stop your antics. And then when he was with the Astros, he was seemingly trying to get away from the Astros constantly, which I can't blame him for. They were terrible at the time, but he also seemed to object to shifts and some of the new age things the Astros were doing, which have since proven to be pretty successful. Anyway, it just sounds like your basic hazing that goes on in sports and hopefully goes on a lot less than it used to, which it sounds like Mike Matheny is lamenting. like Mike Matheny is lamenting. Anyway, I don't know what's going on with the Cardinals these days, but it doesn't seem as if clubhouse-wise they are a model organization right now.

No, Bud Norris is an interesting pitcher. I like them as a free agent. He's been very good since he's joined the Cardinals, been very good for taking over for Greg Holland. He was bad, but yeah, he kind of seems like he's an asshole. I don't think that there's any real question. I did, while you were talking, I did a Google search for Bud Norris asshole, and there were a lot of results. It's been a common point of conversation for this reason and so many others. So Bud Norris, kind of a dick, but probably not something the Cardinals were surprised by when they signed him.

He's a 30-something. He's 30-something, right? He's got to be by now. Yeah, 33. For God's sake. 33, and he looks like he's older than that. And I think his reputation preceded him to the Cardinals. Multiple reasons why he was probably so available as a free agent.

But, you know, as long as you're in the Cardinals dugout and you're Bud Norris and you're not Mike Matheny, you know you're not problem number one, so I guess there's comfort in that. Yeah. The article says, Matheny sees Norris' actions as an effort to carry on the dying tradition of teaching younger players in the harshest possible ways. That doesn't sound like a good tradition. That sounds like a tradition that should be dying. He says, I guess Saxon asked him if Hicks would one day appreciate this.

And Matheny says, probably not, with a chuckle. But Bud's going to continue to do what he thinks is right as a veteran. So you respect that. Do you? Is this a defensive, but I can't tell what the perspective is here. Yeah. It's really hard to tell.

I can't tell whether the article is defending it or just kind of presenting it and letting you draw your own conclusion. Either way, it doesn't come off as a positive thing. And I mean, you don't have to respect what a veteran is doing. If you don't think it's the right thing to do. That's kind of always been one of the big criticisms of Matheny, aside from his in-game moves, is just that he has a lot of deference

to veterans and doesn't trust young players. And here, evidently, he's just kind of okay with whatever the veteran wants to do. And I'm not saying that veterans don't have something to teach rookies. Certainly they do. And if Hicks is late for team meetings or is doing something else that would, I guess, deserve a word from a veteran, fine. That's great. That's what veterans are there for. There's always going to be some kind of hierarchy inside a clubhouse. But if it gets to the point where you are mercilessly riding someone i don't know maybe with certain personalities that would help the person but with others it would have the opposite effect we we've mentioned before that we seldom talk about managers and if there is one manager who is discussed ad nauseum on the internet it is mike metheny i don't watch enough of the cardinals

to really notice or care about the in-game maneuvers that he makes. It's just something that does not appeal to me as an analyst or writer, but this is the kind of thing where I think this would be a window into how Mike Matheny does create a, let's say, under-functional clubhouse environment. This behavior is stupid. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I wonder who's more popular right now, Mike Matheny with Dexter Fowler and Jordan Hicks or A.J. Hinch with Ken Giles, who is now a minor leaguer after he cursed out A.J. Hinch when he was removed from a game the other day. That one seems like it's probably more Giles' problem than A.J. Hinch's, just judging from afar, but not analogous situations, but both situations where a player is not happy with a manager. It happens. All right, before we bring in our guests,

I'm going to leave you with this image and just get your thoughts. So two listeners in our Facebook group independently have posted this image. Now, it's of an ad campaign that is being run by fatherhood.gov, so some government initiative to promote fatherhood and father-son relations or father-child relations. Sounds great. Anyway, both of these listeners, Kevin and Taylor, they posted pictures of images that are plastered on looks like bus benches or just benches out in public, not the same bench, perhaps not the same city. So the message is, take time to be a dad today. And it says fatherhood.gov. Great. All fine so far. Here's the weird thing. The dad and the son, I guess, the child of unspecified sex here,

it's a baseball ad because the father has a baseball bat and the child has a baseball. I hesitate to say holding a baseball bat or holding a baseball because what it is is they are both blobs of mucus for some reason. Are you seeing this? Have you opened this? They look like the Mucinex mascot and the father has a bat stuck inside of him. It's just protruding from him because he is just a green gelatinous mass and the child has a baseball just inside him, just completely consumed by the blob, because he is also a blob. They're holding hands. Not clear to me what they're going to do with this bat and ball, because it doesn't look like they have any other appendages. Why are they blobs of mucus? That's what I can't figure out. There is a comment here that says the blobs

are from the movie Transylvania 3. It's some flavor of weird cross promotion. That's from Brian Bartle. Bartle? You can let us know, but is that true? I have not fact-checked this comment, nor does that in any sense explain a partnership between

Fatherhood.gov, baseball, and Transylvania 3? what is transylvania 3 what is transylvania 1 i can't say i caught transylvania 1 and 2 so i just googled there does appear to be a green blob who is in the transylvania series so uh i guess that's what it is i don't know that the market awareness of transylvania is that high, maybe among children. But this is kind of weird that you would, I mean, it's a great message, I guess, to have fathers spend time with their kids. But it's odd that they're both blobs and that they have baseball equipment inside them. Well, what's unsaid here in this campaign, so fatherhood.gov, it's not for like some sort of stand-in father role.

This is for like actually being a dad. Is that it is promoting i don't know for sure i assume behavior so the thing about the the slogan take time to be a dad today is it's like look i know you don't usually want to be a dad you don't usually want to do your things but you know at least today be accountable to your kid just like hang around maybe have a catch and then you can go back to drinking hanging out in your garage ignoring your child being a terrible role model so it's a it's a weird message with weird characters that it's not even necessarily clear how they would procreate or if they do it asexually it seems like with the bat just like amoeba who just uh have some sort of cellular division going on here i don't know but they are transparent and sticky so it's very strange it's

it's a strange choice of spokespeople or spokesbobs i don't like, not even a little bit. I will link to that if anyone wants to shed some light on this for us. I assume it's a Transylvania tie-in for whatever that's worth, but I don't know. Maybe some actual human-looking people would be better representatives for fatherhood. I don't know. Maybe it's a very positive father character in Transylvania 3. Shed some light on this, but don't shed a Raphael Vignoli degree of light on this. We wouldn't appreciate it. Exactly. All right. We will take a quick break and we'll be back with multiple members of the

Mariners front office to talk about how they engage their fans. And stay tuned after the interview because I'll have a bunch of updates for you as well. To make some enemies And I We're gonna make a little noise We're gonna make a little noise We're gonna make a little noise All right, so last week, Ben and I were talking a little bit. We were musing about the Make Some Noise fan prompt that you see in every ballpark in America. We had some questions about it.

We figured we'd go straight to the source, not just talking about that, but that and also fan engagement as a broader principle. And so we're joined right now by Mariner's Senior Director of Marketing, Greg Green, and also Mariner's Director of Marketing, Mandy Lincoln. I understand that there's a celebrity microphone sighting on this podcast. They're using the microphones that Jerry DePoto and Colin O'Keefe used to record The Wheelhouse. But I will ask you about your own. They won't hear that, will they? I don't know what Jerry listens to during the day. Colin doesn't miss anything.

If it's on the internet, he'll hear it or see it. I understand I'm not supposed to bring up the Marin. Colin doesn't miss anything. If it's on the internet, he'll hear it or see it. I understand I'm not supposed to bring up the Mariners run differential around him. But anyway, I'll ask you both about your bios in a minute. But first, so that we can get to the heart of the mystery,

the make some noise fan prompt on scoreboards and the decibel meter. If you had to do a big explainer, a Mythbusters, I'm sure Safeco Field has one of these. What is the story with the make some noise fan prompt and the decibel meter? When do you use it

and what the decibel meter is actually doing? So the decibel meter and the make some noise prompts, you know, we actually use these for strategic purposes. We can't affect the outcome of the game, but we can help push fans to try to make noise at the right times to help our team to kind of, as rallies start to happen and things start to happen in the game, you start to layer them in more. You know, you get a runner on first and second in the second inning, and you might put one on when Nelson Cruz comes up. That same situation on the eighth inning, and you may be laying into those like between every pitch to really you know get the crowd going and then there's different level of

make noise we you know we know which ones work better than others and definitely the decibel meter one works really well fans you know want to push that over the top so you save that for for a really big situation or to rattle the opposing pitcher if he's gone 2-0 or 3-1 on Nelson is kind of struggling to find the plate. You can mix in the decibel and then the crowd really gets going. And we're trying to affect the game the best we can with those tools that we have. Is that meter measuring anything real? It is measuring the enthusiasm at Safe Field. Okay.

So before I follow up question on that, I guess, Greg, first and then Mandy, second, can you just explain, I guess, quickly how long you've been working for the Mariners and what your, in 50 words or less, I guess, what your job responsibilities are right now? Mandy should really go first. All right. Mandy, you lead off. I'm the rookie of the group. No, no, rookie?

You've been here 10 years. Yeah, 11. This is season 11. Right now, came up again 11 years here. Currently, I assist Greg with the department's advertising efforts and then also have my hands in kind of overseeing the direction of our game presentation. So that experience that the fans do have in the ballpark, whether that is through graphically, through the video board or through audio or through content. So kind of a hybrid role there, again, with game presentation and advertising. presentation and advertising. I got started here in 1995. And as my first gig was back up DJ at the Kingdom, I was I was not the DJ, I was the backup to the DJ. So that was that was my foot in the door. I'm in my 24th season now with the team. I started full time in 1998. And I get a

chance to work on advertising, promotional giveaways. I get the honor of working with Colin O'Keefe and Nathan Rochberg and our amazing social media team and a host of other things, game entertainment with Mandy. And we have a great time over here. So when you, going back to the, the make some noise meter, when you,

when you are, I feel like a pit bull on it, not going to let it go. I mean, this is, this is why we're having this conversation asking them to spill industry secrets here we've already gotten an answer as a non-answer here but what is there is is there like an element of conditioning that you want the fans to pick up on because of course you're you're picking strategic times to deploy it and get that fan enthusiasm you know carrying the meter over the threshold.

It always seems to take a consistent 15 to 20 seconds, which is awfully coincidental. But is there— You really study this a lot. You go to a baseball game, you see that pretty often, and you start to wonder— Do you keep a chart or is there anything that— They never seem to fail to make sufficient noise. They always just manage to get over that limit. No matter what the crowd size is, it's uncanny.

They may be recalibrated each night depending on the crowd size. You don't know these things. It's park adjusted. It's a decibel relative to the attendance in the ballpark. So is it, I guess from your perspective, maybe frustrating isn't the right word, but you're using it at times where you want the fans to make noise. And now in certain ballparks, you think maybe longtime fans, old time baseball fans would know to make noise. I know this is a common complaint about baseball stadiums in general, but is it weird at all that you have to prompt fans in the first place to make noise at times when it seems like they should be making

noise? I don't think it's weird. I think, you know, those prompts are an enhancement. I think fans do make noise. And a lot of times if they are, you know, making noise or starting chants in the ballpark, we'll get out of the way and not overlay, you know, those prompts on the screen. But, you know, the fans know when to do it. And we're really just kind of nudging it along a little more and trying to get a little bit more out of it to, like I said, you know, help our team on the field. So how do you balance wanting to contribute something to the fan experience and not wanting to be intrusive or get in the way of people paying attention to the game or talking to the people sitting next to them because you do hear the complaint from people that, oh, it's so loud at ballparks these days and they're blasting music at me. And these probably tend not to be the younger people

in attendance, but I don't know what the comparison is between the decibel level in ballparks today and ballparks decades ago, but there's a perception, at least, that it's louder than it used to be. Don't know whether that's true, but do you consider just how big a presence you want to be in the typical fans experience? Yeah, it's definitely strategic. We kind of lay out our plan for a game,

but at the same time, like Greg said earlier, we can't control the play on the field, so we're kind of reacting to what happens and looking for those moments again to try to influence the crowd. And again, if it's just get them up and going and then hopefully, you know, they take over from there. I think we've seen a good example of that in the Kings court that we have out there in left field. I mean, beginning their chanting, doing their KKKKK chants after every two-strike opportunity there with Felix. So again, try to nudge them, but then again, get out of the way to let them take it from

there. And to say that it's a more recent phenomenon, I started in 95 and I still haven't been in a baseball game setting louder than, you know, the kingdom was that year. I mean, that was as loud as a baseball game could be. And, you know, we had opportunities in that season to enhance moments and make them, you know, better. you know, better. The one that comes to mind is when Randy came in in game five of the epic game against the Yankees, you know, the crowd was going nuts, but he came into, you know, Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N' Roses.

And just, you know, you can hear it in the background and it's still like makes, you know, the hairs on my arms stand up, you know, thinking about that moment and like, you know, the whole, you know, 58,000 people, people whatever in the kingdom just losing their minds you know seeing the big unit come in at that situation so i i think you know music and video and different things within the ballpark have had the opportunity to be a little bit of an icing on the cake it's funny we just had the chance to talk to randy Johnson the other week, and he's a big fan of Kingsford Grills. Okay. I don't know if you ever knew that from his time in Seattle, but that's a characteristic he has.

We never talked barbecues. Never came up in conversation. I think he was the one who was most enthusiastic. So, Mandy, you mentioned the Kings Court, which is, I think think i don't know if it's the most successful mariners promotion but it's at least the most unique most unique i know that'll piss some people off it is unique it was unique other teams have tried to copy it but the king's court great concept great execution and now i don't obviously want i don't think i'm telling any tales out of school here when i say that felix hernandez is he's come down a little bit he's not what he was at his peak and so is I know that this past spring the Kings court was no longer supposed to hold up K cards I think it's what is it now let's go Felix for for reasons that we don't need to get into but the Kings court Felix Hernandez still very popular and with the the Maple Grove is now

a thing that's starting to take over for James Paxton but as far as the Kings court is concerned is there any relationship at this point between the existence of the Kings court and Felix Hernandez's success at all? Or has it become sort of its own, I guess, just its own group, its own entity of people who just want to show up in the corner, wear a yellow t-shirt and root for the Mariners, almost regardless of how it's going on the mound? I mean, Felix is still the king in the fans' eyes.

And so, you know, every start that he makes still has this kind of magic dust on it. You think you're going to, you know, maybe be able to see something special every time he pitches. So it's still quite the experience for fans to come out. We just had 2,500 strong out a couple weekends ago in one of his most recent starts. So, you know, it's still a thing here at Safeco Field

every time that he takes the mound. Still pretty special. I personally, his walk-in that he has every time he makes a start here at Safeco Field, you know, we hit the music, we hit the boards, and that's one of the moments that has given me the most goosebumps over the years. And still, you know, to this day, it does. And, you know not not every fan in seattle's had an opportunity to experience it's

one of those kind of sports bucket lists is to kind of sit in a uh in a king's court for at least one game i i may add to it you know sitting with the maple grove you, kind of participating in a, you know, in a crowd, a crowd section focused on one guy. It's pretty special. I know the Rangers had launched a Hugh Darvish fan section. The Rays had a fan section for David Price. I'm sure this has gone around. How does it feel when you see other ballparks sort of, I don't want to say steal, but, you

know, basically steal a concept that clearly was very successful? You know, it's great. And we, baseball teams, we compete, you know, like hell on the field against each other. And, you know, if there was any secret formula for picking, you know, an outfield or an outfield defense, there's no way in heck we would share that with the Rangers. But off the field, there's a lot of collaborative effort to help each other out from a business perspective. So we've been more than happy to work with other organizations and share with them our learnings on the Kings Court. And likewise, we get other ideas from teams as well. Yeah, I was going to ask about that.

We get other ideas from teams as well. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. I assume that you do that sort of opposition research because it's not really direct competition in the way that teams are competing on the field. It's not as if someone's going to say, I'm not happy with the Safeco fan experience, so I'm going to go to a game in Arlington tonight. You can't really choose. You're kind of stuck with the local ballpark that you're given. So it makes sense, I suppose, for everyone to kind of pool ideas like that. I mean, do you have kind of a network of, I don't know, scoreboard people and fan experience people who share this is what's working for us this season? Or do you have people who are actually going to games and reporting back on what they see?

We actually have next week, there's a big conference called just that. It's called IDEA. Greg, do you know what it stands? I'm not sure. Information Display Entertainment Association. So we have several members of our game presentation and productions department.

People that are writing scripts to graphics, to videos, they're all gathering with their counterparts, not only from baseball, but from other leagues, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, all getting together to kind of look at each other's work, kind of tips from their experiences. And again, just sharing best practices and, you know, take away what you can and try to apply it to your show or, you know, make it unique to your show. So definitely, you know, opportunities to collaborate. We just had a member of our department get back from watching or doing a ballpark visit down in Atlanta yesterday. So definitely conversations.

Yeah, we have teams that come up and visit us. yeah we have teams that come up and visit us interestingly enough on the idea conference that's taking place I believe there's an entire symposium on the make noise prop that they'll spend like two and a half hours on you guys might want to find your way into that yes

fans search for realism so as sort of a broad question I can already anticipate the first part of your answer will be, it's more fun to go to the ballpark. But one thing you might have noticed about the Mariners this year is that they are good. One thing you might have noticed about Mariners teams you've worked for in the past is that they were not.

So you have this team in 2018 that is in a playoff position for the first time in quite a while. And so aside from the obvious first level, I guess, cliche answer, how is your job different? How, how does the day to day change when you have a team that is more able to sell itself? You know, in sports, you know, we, we market a strange product in terms that our, our product changes yearly, it changes daily, changes inning by inning based on what happens. So, you know, changes inning by inning based on what happens. So, you know, right now our product's great and everybody's excited about it. And, you know, from the things that we can control outside the white lines and the competition, our goal is always to be consistent. You know, we want to put on a consistently good show at Safeco Field for our fans, you know, whether we're winning 9-0 or even in our 1-16 year, we lost games as well at home and blew leads and things like that happened.

But we need to be put on a consistently good show. Food needs to be good at the ballpark. Customer service experience needs to be good. We need to be consistently good win or lose. So as fans, Mandy and I are both fans we grew up in the area we grew up loving this team we're obviously having a great time and loving it and we you know we we live and die with it every day and and love this season but you know we we we look at some of the times we've we've been down as as opportunities to try things um you know

the king's court was born out of that. We had those tickets available and those sections available, and we were looking for a way to, you know, highlight Felix's start at the ballpark and make that a special experience. So, you know, there's opportunities in all those standings, but for us, really, it's about consistency and putting on a first-class show

and giving fans a first-class experience at Safeco Field. Are there any experiments that come to mind over your fairly long 10 years that did not perhaps pan out quite as well as the Kings court? Anything that you tried and it backfired and you said never again. Yeah. I mean, totally. We, you know, when, when we had off years, we, we would roll up our sleeves and try anything. And the one that always comes to mind is we were trying some new entertainment things at the ballpark.

And it was a race with fans. It's actually funny because there was this viral video just recently of a lemon rolling down a hill. But I don't know if – did you guys see that? Yep. Last night. but I don't know did you guys see that yep but our thing is we put somebody like two fans

at the top of each aisle and like let them drop a ball and it was like a competition to like see which ball went down the stairs passes and it was dumb and ridiculous but we did it because you know we were having a rough season and it was September and

we were willing to try things. Yeah, there's been a lot of moments like that that you're like, okay, well, that didn't work. We'll move on. Late to the game, but a free suggestion could have been, what can Carlos Peguero lift? Yes. Well, so you mentioned the excitement of certain songs playing when certain people come in. the excitement of certain songs playing when certain people come in. I don't know how directly this is within your purview, but are you involved directly in getting those picks from players about what they want their songs to be, their walk-up songs, their entrance songs? How do players

communicate that? How often do they refresh their selections? Yeah, there's a secret app that every player in Major League Baseball has. They just send songs. No, they, you know, we'll work with them before spring training or during spring training, talk to them about, you know, what they'd like to hear. There's guys that will say, yeah, go ahead and pick whatever you want. That's more rare now. And then a lot of guys will, you know, pick a a song stick with it for the year and then there's guys like d gordon that are changing it almost nightly and you know we'll we'll text up new requests based on what they're hearing but it's it's changed during my tenure here i think just based on the access that uh everybody has to music now you know when i started you used to have to go down to the tower records and buy a disc and listen to it and you know rip off a track and and and load it in and today you can pull up any song ever created from your phone so you know just like all of us these players have their own personal collections of music music that gets them going so know, these days we went from maybe, you know, back in the early 90s,

a few guys picking their music to, you know, almost every guy in Major League Baseball, even when they get the first call-up, has music that they're ready to go with to the plate. And will you just send someone down to the clubhouse if there's a new call-up and say, hey, welcome to the team. What's your song? I try, like if they're brand new, I try to pick something to start and then let the new guy focus on baseball to start. And then if he has something, he can send it up the next couple of days. They usually will tell, you know, if we're not down in the clubhouse before the game, they'll tell a clubhouse guy or PR staff member, hey, can you ask them to play X for me when I come up?

And is there ever a rejected selection? Are you sure you want that song to play? Is that wholesome enough for a ballpark experience? Does that happen often? Yeah, that happened to me early on in my career with a future Hall of Famer. early on in my career with uh a future hall of famer uh where i was a young pup here in the 20 you know i was in my early 20s when i started here and um uh junior sent up a track and you know i didn't have the editing equipment that that we do now where we can you know mix out you know certain words or pick up different parts of songs so he sent up a track and i i wasn't communicating with

i was just a backup dj so i wasn't communicating with the clubhouse at the time so i just sent it back down i said i can't we can't play this and they sent it back up and i sent it back down and the guy that was in the middle of all this just got fed up one day and saw me like somewhere near the field and he's like come with me i'm like i don't know you know i usually don't go anywhere near the field so i walk out there and he goes he takes me into the dugout and sits me down uh next to junior and junior like pats the bench like come here son i hear you understand i understand you're the one not playing my music grab a seat in my office i sit down and like mandy i grew up a huge griffey fan so i'm like sweating bullets and uh i he says to me

he said i i understand uh you're not playing my song i said yeah well it's got some questionable lyrics in it junior and do you recall what what song this was i can't i have no idea so i have no idea so i said i mean like if if i play the song, I'm worried I'm going to get fired. And in true Junior fashion, he like pauses and he goes, don't worry, I'll get you another job. So I think I found a different point in the song to play than where he wanted it. We reached a compromise. I was always surprised that for a time there,

Ichiro was allowed to walk up to Rihanna's S&M, but I wasn't offended. I guess that's... That stands for Seattle Mariners. Isn't that what it... Yep. Am I wrong? If that's what you told me, then that's super.

So, Mandy, I understand you have your hand in a lot of the video board content creation. And among the things that I am told you're responsible is the D. Gordon feature, quote, flashy or trashy. So this is a two-part question, but for one, can you explain to the audience what the D. Gordon feature flashy or trashy is? Flashy or trashy, we ask D. His nickname is Flash. So we just ask him, you know, we give him a pop culture topic and have him weigh in if he thinks it's flashy or trashy. For example, we asked him Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl outfit.

I don't know how well it was received. So we asked him to weigh in. Spoiler alert, he said trashy to that. And encouraged JT to fire his stylist. to that and encourage JT to fire his stylist. We'll have everything from, you know, kale to goat yoga to whatever kind of is the latest pop culture trend. So he's given us some pretty fun answers. We were able to meet with him when he first came up here during January. He came up for an event and we got a sneak peek at what his personality was like. And then before we went down to spring training, which is where we normally film most of our features, we kind of knew, hey, we've hit a gold mine, and this guy's got some stuff to say, and it's entertaining, and it's fun.

So how can we capitalize on showcasing that to our fans? I don't know what goat yoga is, but whatever you tell me about the truth is going to be less interesting than what I've imagined. So we're going to leave it there. So related to like, related to, as far as the concepts go, and then really just generally,

as far as your own work goes, a promotion, how do you measure the feedback how do you know when you're doing a good job when you have a hit or when you have a miss i think some you know with you know the flash you're trashy you get an audible response from from the fans and so you know you know that that is successful there's some features that are more just informational we have a current one that just kind of has players talking about their call up to major leagues and, you know, where they were at when they got that call, what emotion was going on, how did that first game go? So it's not a feature that would necessarily list an audible

response, but it's just, in general, it's a way to kind of humanize the player. You know, these people know them as just athletes, what their stats are. But, you know, we try to find ways to bring out their personality to tell a little bit of their story. So again, some are audible, some are not. Some, you know, we just might at the end of the year feel, hey, you know, we don't think we quite hit one out of the park with this one. So different variables to determine if it's successful or not. So during the very recently, the Mariners had one of their players eligible for the final vote. That's Gene Segura. And so the the Cent Segura campaign was launched. It was very successful. I was surprised that he actually got outvoted by 50

percent by Jesus Aguilar. But I guess that's the different league. So I don't know what the Brewers believe in Jesus. Believe the power of Jesus. Is that what the marketing campaign was? It was. The Brewers did a great job in the We Believe in Jesus. They got local churches involved and it was very creative. They did awesome work. Wow. Something to learn. And I know the Brewers fans are also big Gene Segura fans. So I think they helped us as well. So as far as the hashtag SendSegura campaign goes, you don't get a whole lot of notice, presumably, that he's going to be one of the players on the final vote. I don't know what kind of numbers you get through it all. But, you know, it went so far as to have like an hour and a half fan voting fest at the field on the infield on Wednesday afternoon to get people supporting Cigar.

How does something like that come together in such a hurry? And I mean, are there at that point even any limits? Because at least based on the social media blitz, pretty much every single person was involved and it all came together really fast. Yeah, it's crazy and fun and exhausting. And, you know, credit goes to our fans and our players for getting involved really quickly. You know, we knew when the first final vote announcement was going to be on Sunday. And then we knew that we were going to get a call if we had a candidate Sunday morning.

I got that call at like 730 in the morning after a wedding the previous night, a late night the previous night. And I remember jotting down who the final vote candidates were. And the woman who was sharing the news with me was like, you know, Gene's in, you know, he's going up against Eddie Rosario and Andrew Benettoni. I'm like, uh, and Angela Simmons from LA, it's another big market. And she ended with Jean Carlos Stanton.. I'm like, uh, and Angela Simmons from LA. It's another big market. And she ended with, uh, Jean Carlos Stanton. And I'm like, oh God. Um, so we had some ideas of things we wanted to do if we had had a candidate. And then we, we met here at Safeco field, uh, 10 in the morning on Sunday morning and

discussed specific ideas around Jean, set up the hashtag, got to work on a t-shirt and a campaign slogan. We called the Giants. We have some friends at the Giants. We called them almost immediately, probably around eight in the morning and set up an alliance with them. And we heard from the brewers at like nine in the morning like trying to set up an alliance and i kind of felt bad that we'd already set ours up and uh but uh then from there it was just a sprint to do as much as we can and uh you know everybody contributing ideas and you know from front office members to players to fans and trying to execute and do as much as you can in that time window that the final vote is going on. And giving Colin O'Keefe as much coffee and Red Bull as his little system can stand

so he can stay up at all hours to engage with our fans and social media. But it was a lot of fun. And the Segura Fest that we did, uh, uh, on, on the last day in the last hour came about the, the night before of, you know, what's the, what's one more thing we can do. We need to do one more thing. And Camden Finney, who works in our office and who was a kind of a de facto campaign manager was texting me late into the night. Like we need to do one more thing. We need one more thing. And it thing and it's like okay i gotta get a lot of people's approval and she just kept texting back saying okay i got this person on board and i got this person on board and she texted mandy probably

like 11 o'clock at night saying okay you know we need your help first thing in the morning putting this all together and uh we didn't announce that in the market until you know 9 30 it went on on air and on 7 10 and i think colin posted it at about 9 45 in the morning and you know, 9.30, it went on air on 7.10. And I think Colin posted it at about 9.45 in the morning. And, you know, we had 600 fans show up to vote for Gene. So it's a credit to our amazing fan base and, you know, a really, really great player to vote for. So in our Facebook group, I often see our listeners posting pictures of the scoreboard in their respective ball people in the ballpark, that is a captive audience and those people don't always go and look up those stats. This could be their first point of contact with some of those statistics because in many cases, you still have to really

look for those things. They don't really just jump out at you unless they are on the scoreboard at your ballpark. So what has your philosophy been as far as presenting that information and, you know, giving people value, but also not cluttering the screen too much and then also not bombarding them with things that they don't understand? What kind of balance have you struck there? You know, you go to a ballgame and you're going to be sitting next to somebody, it's going to be their first baseball game they've attended. And whether that's somebody that's young, it might be somebody that's old, and you're going to be sitting next to somebody that's a season ticket holder that's been going for 20, 30 years and may have a really great understanding of stats and advanced sabermetrics.

And it's striking that balance. And over time, as we moved over to Safeco Field, we had more scoreboard real estate to share more information with our fans. So we get to display first pitch strikes and display batter versus pitcher information on every pitch and display lots of other different information. But we're constantly looking to add more to where we can, you know, with the space we can

without taking away from the game or, you know, cluttering the scoreboard. But, you know, I know we're looking at some additional stats for maybe this year or the coming years as well. So, Greg, you've been around with Mariners for two decades. Mandy, you've been around for one. And, you know, going back 10 years, 20 years, teams were, teams, at least online identities, if they even had one, were less accessible than they are today. So when it comes to promotions or video content or just the ways that you want to see the team marketed or even going as far as like the team commercials, how much of your work now is sort of almost like crowdsourced versus where it used to be? Which is to say, I guess, how receptive are you to people who don't work for the team, of course, who are fans, who maybe have ideas of things that you could do?

And then are you able to turn any of those around? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I think social media is such an amazing opportunity to make a direct connection with the fans. And, you know, we've always made it a priority to, you know, not only share information about the team and content and vote Segura, but also listen in the social space. So, you know, we monitor Mariners and Safeco Field and different promotions that we do. And, you know, we're listening for that feedback from fans about, you know, what they liked, what they didn't like, what ideas that they have for us. they didn't like, what ideas that they have for us. And we're constantly looking for ways to, you know, recognize, you know, fans when they do share a great idea or if they're just, you know, kind of celebrating Mariners baseball

in the social space. But for us, it's really important for it to be a two-way conversation and not just to be broadcast, broadcast, broadcast. This is us. You know, I always compare it to going to a party and it's that person that kind of saddles up to you and just continues to talk about themselves. Social media accounts that do that are uninteresting. You have to listen and, you know, hear what your fans like and, you know, what they're into and what they're talking about.

And Colin and Nathan and Jose do an amazing job of listening, not only to our fans, but to, you know, everything that's happening in the social space. And, you know, trying to relate it back to Mariners baseball or, you know, celebrate what fans are doing there. So you recently hosted Turn Ahead the Clock Night, and this was the 20th anniversary of the original event. So, Greg, i guess you were there when that happened yeah i was a rookie yeah it's my rookie season okay so did anything from the original event end up becoming part of baseball that you can recall was there anything that was prescient or when you were planning this time around was there anything that got left on the cutting room floor that you were

thinking of incorporating into this that didn't make it or just any favorite things that did yeah i mean this is such a unique and special event for for mariners baseball that we we've been you know kevin martinez who who launched the the first event and um you know who worked with griffey on the first event has been talking about doing this for you for years and you know the 20th anniversary of it gave us an opportunity to do it again so you know we started with that event in uh 98 is our kind of foundation and and we reviewed those scripts and you know we're kind of porters here. We save everything. We had the original scripts, we had photos, and we wanted to, you know,

kind of have a little bit of a nostalgia for the future, if you will. I don't know if that's even a thing. So, you know, bringing back the uniforms and some of the other elements, the DeLorean, but then trying to do some new and different elements. These turn-ahead, turn-back-the-clock nights are really fun for our group to put together. We start working on them in months in advance and brainstorming hundreds of different ideas of how we can make it special for our fans.

If you come to the ballpark on that night, it should feel like really unique different game and and there's there's lots of different takeaways uh i'm trying to think of my favorite moment from from this past turn ahead the clock night again i think it was like two weeks ago and it feels like it was two months ago because we've already had like 10 games between now and then but what was there were so many great things in there i'll come up with do you have anything on Turn Ahead? I think it was just the visuals. You know, that was one thing that, you know, the Kingdome, the nice, I mean, I wasn't there for it, but you know, it was this dome where you could have lasers and kind of shape the

atmosphere that way. You know, here with the open ballpark, don't have that opportunity, but we have all of these ribbon boards and, you know, a giant mirrors vision board that can help kind of bring the event to life so i think just a lot of kind of like the graphics package that we brought um just how dynamic some of the the features would could be you know our hydro races became you know this outer space delorean challenge so i think a lot of that just visuals kind of really brought the event to life. You asked about what, what didn't make it and a favorite I've got too. So my thing that didn't make it was like the only thing that I worked on.

I remember like we, we did a brainstorm similarly back in 98 where we went to sneakers, a local sports bar on Occidental right by the kingdom. And we did this like, you know, two hour brainstorm session for the event in 98 and came up with a list of 200 different ideas. And I was, again, the rookie at the time. And there was like one idea assigned to me,

which was go find a robot to deliver the baseball for the first pitch. So I went and met with the University of Washington engineering department. I was like gung-ho about nailing this. I, you know, met with him a couple of times, drove back and forth to UW came back with photographs of the robot sat down with my my boss Kevin Martinez at the time

and said okay I got a robot here's the picture of it and he looked at the picture he's like huh kind of looks like a garbage can and I was just like destroyed and And I think he could read on my face like how like crushed I was by this. So he's like, you know what? It's all right. We'll call him Mr. Scraps and we'll roll him out there. So Mr. Scraps didn't make it back, which is good because like for five or six years after that event, if you Google imaged my name, Mr. Sc mr scraps image was the first thing that came up and then my favorite thing that we added to this year's event was we got to predict that we did a

feature in between innings where we you know did headlines from 2027 and in seattle mclemore elected mayor and you know sonics win their eighth straight championship. But my personal favorite was that we got to announce that the hockey team won their first Stanley Cup. And because the hockey team doesn't have a name out here, we got to name the hockey team. So I think that since we did that, they have to be forever known as the Seattle Yeti. That's going to be the name of the team.

I think brown furry, like sweaters to wear that would work right nobody else is doing it they kind of would look like Chewbacca out there perhaps yeah right be fringy out there gives you a little more padding you're warmer I guess related to the coming inevitability of a hockey team and probably

not too far after that a basketball team maybe the order is mixed up I know you'll see on social media, you know the whole city's united and the teams all get along with one another. The Sounders and Seahawks were supporting Gene Segura and his all-star campaign, but there has to be, at some level, maybe you try not to think about this too much,

but there is a little bit of a competition for disposable income. So how do you sort of balance the rivalry against other area products with the fact that this is really just the same city pulling for sports teams and you all want to be on the same page? You know, I'll tell you, you know, real competition today. We're not playing here today at Safeco Field, but, you know, it's sunny and 75 in Seattle today. And, you know, if you're sitting at home trying to decide what to do tonight, you know, you can go to Alki, you can go have dinner somewhere, you can go for a hike.

You know, there are, you know, hundreds of things to do in and around the city. And that's our competition. We have to make, you know, Safeco feel something that you want to do on a summer night in Seattle. We have to make it a part of your summer. So for us, that's what the competition is. And, you know, the other thing I'll say is, you know, you look at something like the arts community and, you know, the Pacific Northwest Ballet is not looking at the Seattle Symphony and going, you know, we just, we got to crush them on ticket sales. That's who we got to beat. You know, the arts community, you know, they work together and they care about each other and they support one another. And it's the same thing in the sports community. We're

fans of the Hawks and the Storm, the Sounders, the Huskies, Cougars. And we try to support one another. The Seahawks have had our players out for flag raising ceremonies. We have their guys out for first pitches. We were all in during their Super Bowl run. And, you know, they've, like you said, been great supporters of us and our most recent Sencigura campaign. Well, I don't live in Seattle, so you're not going to get that much of my business, unfortunately, although I have been to Safeco and enjoyed it. But I would just say that if I were in the city, I would probably buy tickets just to watch the roof open and close. So I would recommend regardless of the weather. It's pretty cool, right?

Yeah, just I mean, I would just sit there and have it be sliding in and out all game long, whether it's raining or not. That to me would be about as big an attraction as the baseball itself, because that roof is really cool. It is really cool. People ask like, you know, how much can you open it? How long does it take to open? And I always say, you know, it can open once and then it once it closes during the game, the rule is it can't open again. And we always say it's because the roof is not a toy to play with and make it go open and close. But yeah, it's a pretty cool feature. So the last thing I wanted to ask for this is the Mariners made their mark, I think, as far as the marketing is concerned.

I think the first team, at least the first team to my knowledge, to have good and clever commercials. And that's been going on for decades now. People always look forward to the Mariners team commercials. Other teams have launched their own clever commercials. I don't know who came first. It doesn't really matter. But as far as filming team commercials goes, and also just as far as video content for the board or promotions for the team in general, you might have noticed the Mariners have a general manager who's constantly churning over the roster. This has crossed your mind. And even before that,

when the Mariners were worse, they were just churning through players because they weren't very good. So how much more challenging is it to try to promote a team in advance when you really don't have a great idea who's still going to be on the roster at any given week? have a usually a core group of players that you know going into a season that you're gonna have an opportunity to promote and celebrate and you know there's always opportunities uh you know whether it be through the commercials that usually last the entire season or you know now with social media to to highlight guys and you know help build the bond between players and fans and educate them on who they are what what their personalities are, what their likes and dislikes are. So I think in winning seasons and in losing seasons, there's, there's, you know, opportunities to do that. And, and Jerry is certainly a, you know, great fodder for potential future commercials. We've talked to some ideas of, of how to highlight his, uh, uncanny abilities to,

to make almost daily deals. Um, Nathan, Nathan had a great idea in our social media department for a, a Christmas video where, you know, it's, it's, uh, Jerry and his staff, you know, the baseball staff getting together for one of those white elephant gift exchanges. you know the baseball staff getting together for one of those white elephant gift exchanges and you you start it out and then it gets to jerry and then he makes another deal for another item and then you do one of those little like clock fast forward like five hours and a few people have peeled off and he's still making deals and then you fast forward the clock another six hours and it's just jerry with all the gifts, according to the decibel meter that I keep next to my computer,

this podcast has finally gotten loud enough. So I think we can close it down. But Greg and Mandy, I'd like to thank you very much for your time on this otherwise beautiful sunny Seattle afternoon. And yeah, thank you for joining and explaining as much as you could. Thanks for the opportunity.

Go Mariners. Thank you. All right, I'll be right back to wrap up with some updates on things that we talked about earlier and some other stuff too. Well, shortly after we got off the line with Mandy and Greg, James Paxton left his start on Friday after only 17 pitches with lower back stiffness. So make some noise. Hopefully he's okay.

But if he isn't, it makes that wildcard race more interesting, which Jeff and I were just talking about earlier this week. If Paxton were hurt, maybe Billy Bean would be a buyer again. We shall see. So one thing that Jeff and I had planned to ask Greg and Mandy, but neglected to, was about fun facts on the video board, how they generate them, what the goal is, what qualifies as one. You might still email and ask, but we actually got an email from listener Andrew, who is one of the video board operators for the Giants at AT&T Park. So I asked him about the video board fun fact process. He said, as far as fun facts, we don't do many of those at the Giants, unfortunately. We ran a few at the beginning of the year that were provided by an

intern, just generic stuff like has won three gold gloves for Brandon Crawford or something. That was spearheaded by the Giants' digital and social media department. Our stats person who runs the scoreboard is also religious about going through the press notes each day and marking down, among other things, career milestones, hitting streaks, etc. A different operator builds those graphics to keep handy for later in the game. There is a Derek Holland first career home run graphic still collecting dust somewhere in our system, for example. There was a running Kelby Tomlinson fun fact gag earlier in the year that the Padres and Angels had about how he, quote, wears glasses despite having perfect 20-20 vision that I wanted to respond to, but I could never

quite figure out how. We don't run goofy visiting team facts, although I would like to. We did it when I worked for the Rivercats, and I would play goofy walk-up music for the visiting team, but the Giants are a lot more muted when it comes to stuff like that. Anyway, just goes to show that there is an Effectively Wild listener who does every job in the world, so if your job is generating fun facts for a stadium scoreboard, let us know. All right, I promised you updates and updates you shall have. So I mentioned listener Nick earlier in the episode, the architect who had emailed us. Well, he followed up. He says he's finally had time to research the stadium. This is difficult, since most of the articles I've found are focused on things like baseball and finances and collecting Twitter reactions that occasionally feature good jokes about how there are too many people in the stadium in those renderings. But he says he finally found one that talks about the architecture briefly and gives a little more insight into the giant glass dome. This is from the Bradenton Herald. And Nick says, I bolded the key point here. Even

though it's a glass roof, that glass is photovoltaic. PV glass is basically clear solar panels, so they will absorb solar energy to power the building while providing insulation from the outdoor air temperature and reducing the heat gain you would normally get from the light. That shading is why real grass wouldn't be able to grow. There's just no way plants will get enough light to live. I haven't seen any specific PV glass products listed for the stadium, but the product link below seems relatively popular, or at least has great search engine optimization, and he links me to amorphous silicon photovoltaic glass. He says I haven't found any pricing for it, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be cheap, even in smaller scale uses. The renderings make it clear that the stadium

would have huge panels, so it's not hard to see why the roof alone is expected to cost a quarter of a billion dollars. And honestly, it's likely to cost way more than their estimate. That's an honest architect. In short, not only will the glass dome not fry fans like ants under a magnifying glass, but it should provide reasonable comfort and energy savings. I'm sure the taxpayers will feel great about that. So that's good news. Thank you very much, Nick. Rafael Vignoli should look into photovoltaic glass for his next project. However, there exists another objection to the Rays' proposed stadium. This comes to us courtesy of listener Andrew, a different Andrew. Andrew is an architectural engineer. He has visited 32 major league stadiums, and he has worked on a variety of stadiums around the world, including some baseball stadiums, he opines that in more general terms, quote, I feel like the new

Ray Stadium is a huge whiff. I've worked on feasibility studies for other baseball stadiums, and the overarching objectives, especially with roof stadiums, are that they feel like a regular baseball stadium when the roof is open. Bright blue skies, views to neighboring buildings, think PNC or AT&T. Objectives for the roof are that it doesn't obstruct the above field view or the field of play when closed and you can't see it when it's open. The best example of this is, what do you know, Safeco in Seattle, where the roof completely retracts over the rear of the stadium when not in use. Although, again, I much prefer when it is in use. Andrew continues, what the Rays are proposing

is a fixed roof with operable wall panels that achieve neither of those criteria for about the Although, again, I much prefer when it is in use. Andrew continues, Now here's something we hadn't considered. In addition to providing protection from the weather for baseball, roofs at stadiums provide what planners call weather certainty, meaning they can schedule high-value concerts with a reassurance that they won't be rained out. While this stadium appears to partially cover that, I'm still not sure they've created a space where concerts would be ideal. The large amount of glass will create a poor acoustic environment, like why the Marlins Park feels like a swimming pool. Good point, Andrew. It may not burn you, but it may be a bad place to hear Pearl Jam. Andrew also includes a stat blast in his email about the argument that the stadium needs

a roof because it rains in the afternoons in Florida in the summer. Andrew says, I analyzed five years of historic rain data in Tampa and found that an evening game starting at 7 p.m. had less than a 1% chance of raining during the expected playtime. Speaking with people in Tampa, it seems the population has a disposition to staying dry and that if they even think it might rain, they might not make a trip to the ballpark, hence the perceived need for a roof. Not sure how this has improved attendance in Miami. Gonna guess not a whole heck of a lot, although that may have more to do with the Marlins

than the rain. So thank you, Andrew, and all our other architectural engineers. Another follow-up, after Jeff and I talked about the Jordan Hicks and Bud Norris article, Jordan Hicks actually tweeted in response to it. So Kenan Middleton of the Angels quote-tweeted Mark Saxon, the author of that article, and said, after being under his wing last year, I can promise you he's only looking out for Jordan Hicks. Bud is a big lead-by-example guy.

Once I learned that, our relationship changed forever. 100 emoji. And Jordan Hicks says, I couldn't agree more. So make of that what you will. Jordan Hicks seems to be tweeting that all is well with him and Bud Norris. I don't know why he didn't say that when he was asked for a quote for the article. Maybe he was just busy. Maybe Mark Saxon made more of it than it was. Maybe Jordan Hicks just doesn't want to say so publicly. Maybe he doesn't want to be badgered by Bud Norris even more. Also, just as I was about to post this, Derek Gold put an article up about this issue.

He has quotes from Hicks. Hicks says, Norris has the best intentions for me. Bud is not bad at all. He's getting on me because he wants me to be a better player, and I know it's to make me a better teammate. Evidently, there was a battle between Norris and Hicks about the volume of the music in the clubhouse. Hicks was turning it up. Norris was turning it down. So I'll link to that follow-up article in case you're interested in the details.

Another follow-up from JP Hornstra, who covers the Angels and the Dodgers, also an Effectively Wild listener. Earlier this week, Jeff and I talked about Mike Trout's love of fishing and crabbing. Well, JP has written about Mike Trout's love of hunting, so more members of the animal kingdom have reason to fear Mike Trout. Mike Trout is evidently an accomplished bow hunter. He told JP that he got his start around age 10 shooting deer, duck, rabbit, and pheasant in his home state. Now, this is a story from 2013. Angels prospect Caleb Cowart is also a bowhunter. He mounts his game and keeps them in a trophy room of sorts at his parents' house in Georgia. Trout does not. I don't shoot anything I don't eat, he said.

So, Mike Trout, bowhunter, carnivore, but not into trophies. Kind of fits with what we know about Mike Trout. And although it may not sound this way, bowhunting may actually be safer than crabbing. Listener Chase sent us a link to an article just from this week about a man who contracted a life-threatening flesh-eating bacteria while crabbing in New Jersey. We hope he's okay.

We hope this never happens to Mike Trout. Please do not email us questions about how valuable Mike Trout would be with a flesh-eating bacteria. And also thanks to the many of you who tweeted at me to offer your condolences. Yes, Williams Astadio struck out on Thursday, swinging no less, against Blake Snell,

who, if you didn't think he should be an All-Star already, now he struck out Williams Astadio swinging. Definitely an All-Star. That was actually Astadio's first strikeout since June 11th in AAA, so he had gone more than a month between strikeouts. Granted, he wasn't playing every day, but never mind that. And our condolences and best wishes to Garrett Richards, who will be having Tommy John surgery.

I know it probably seems as if Garrett Richards has already had two Tommy John surgeries, but this will actually be his first one. He had a torn ACL. He tore his UCL, but got stem cell injections and tried to pitch through it. Then he had nerve irritation in his biceps, but he's only 30. So we do hope that we get to see healthy, good Garrett Richards again. And while I'm on the subject of the Angels, to bring things full circle, Albert Pujols on Thursday tied Ken Griffey Jr. with his 630th career home run, and it came against the Mariners.

All right, so that will do it for today and also for this week. You can support this podcast and ensure that there will be many more weeks to come by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. You can sign up there, pledge some small monthly amount, keep the podcast going. The following five listeners have already done so.

Stephen Bacala, Sean Cusack, AJ Schreier, Andy Carl, and Brett O'Neill. Thanks to all of you. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, we hope that you have a wonderful weekend. We'll be back to talk to you again early next week. Deep inside me I've got a way To fill it all up till it bursts I've got a way

To stare into it till it's blinding I've got a way To ignite the flame and burn for it.