Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1274: Meet the New Manager, Different From the Old Manager

Episode Date: September 25, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo, Jeff McNeil, and Juan Graterol, Shaq Thompson and the highest minor-league strikeout rates, the last week of the season, the lowest ERAs of the second half, Bryan Mitchell, and why voting for pitcher awards may be getting even more complicated, then (20:14) bring on The Athletic’s […]

🎵 Don't blame me, don't blame me cause I tried I need your love, it's so bad Girl, I'm trying to ride Hello and welcome to episode 1274 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello! Williams Estadillo had another pretty good weekend, setting a minimum of 70 plate appearances in Major League Baseball. There are 479 players who have batted at least 70 times.

Williams Estadio continues to rank in first place in strikeout rate, lowest strikeout rate, I should say, 2.7% of the time. He struck out twice in 73 plate appearances, three home runs, seven runs, 15 RBI. He's batting.33 338 slugging 521 is the lowest strikeout rate in baseball luis guillorme is still hanging tight at 4.1 percent so he needs to strike out a few times so that asadio can get a little bit more room but otherwise there's no one closer than 7.2 percent andrel and simmons in that sort of simmons joe

panic michael brantley area where there are normally some players hanging out. Estadio has shown up in the top 30 in WRC Plus so far. Now, the unfortunate news is that his contact rate has dropped from second to third. He's behind the goddamn Breivik Valera and also Luis Guillorme, who has taken the lead of four tenths of one percentage point. That's not. But I will say if we could just deviate a little bit, we'll give Estadio another week to play and he will continue to not strike out. But can I say one more thing? Breivik Valera, in an incredibly selfish act, jammed his finger into Gary Sanchez's shin guard on a slide into home plate, Gary Sanchez's shin guard on a slide into home plate fractured the second metacarpal of his left index finger, obviously intentionally, so that he could sit at the top of that contact rate leader board for the end of the season. This is like being the batting title leader and sitting out

the last few days of the season and just qualifying because you have a high enough average. He is just intentionally breaking his finger so that he can surpass William S. DiDio on top of the contact rate leaderboard. Not cool, Bravik Valera. Obnoxious. But while we're looking at these kinds of numbers, I would like to give, I don't, have we even mentioned the name Jeff McNeil one time on this podcast? I want to say maybe once briefly in a listener email around the time he came up, but we have not given him his due. Okay. So, I mean, look, I haven't watched a lot of Jeff McNeil.

All I'll say is that he's not Estadio. No one is Williams Estadio, not even Bray Vic Valera, no matter what he thinks. But Jeff McNeil has struck out just 9.5% of the time with the Mets. He's batted 221 times. He ranks 12th in baseball in WRC+, with a minimum of 200 plate appearances. He's actually one point above Brandon Nimmo, which is interesting. He's three points behind Jose Ramirez. Jeff McNeil, not an ultra contact hitter like Williams Estadio, but one of the better contact hitters around.

And he also is tied for second place in in-zone swing rate. His plate discipline looks an awful lot like Freddie Freeman. He doesn't have Freddie Freeman power, but I don't have anything further to say about Jeff McNeil except that this guy deserves a little bit of attention because for all the things that have gone wrong with the Mets this year, and they were reluctant to even bring McNeil up, it seemed like, for a while, but he's been really, really good as like a what is he 26 year old rookie or something like

that who kind of a low upside player allegedly but increasingly we don't really know what low upside means or if it even exists because McNeil's just a guy who goes up there swings a lot hits small and and does pretty well so good for the Mets they found something here yeah and you know we got an email from listener Chris who titled his email Astadio 2.0, very provocative subject line for us. And he pointed us to the news that the twins have selected the contract of catcher Juan Graterol, who has been around for a while. He is a 29-year-old kind of career backup catcher in and out of the majors and the minors. And according to the MLB Trade Rumors article about this purchase, the more fascinating element of Gratterall's game is his plate discipline profile.

He's got just a 2.4% strikeout rate with the Rochester Red Wings, along with a 1.6% walk rate. Put more simply, Gratterall swings often and he doesn't miss very much. It does sound very much like the Twins just called up Astadio 2.0 to be Astadio's backup, I guess, at this point. But if you look at Gretelroll's career stats, he is not quite in Astadio territory. I think he has something like an 11% career minor league strikeout rate, which is what,

you know, more than twice as high as Astadio. So unless Astadio's approach has rubbed off on Graterol this year while they've both been in AAA, which would be a fun story, he is just not quite in the same class. There are many pretenders to the throne, but there's really only one Williams. And I guess the opposite of Williams-As has to do this is a name we have mentioned before but just looking at the minor leagues this year with a minimum of 250 plate appearances that seems like a good minimum so the opposite of estadio of course being a player who strikes out a lot so let's do this third place strikeout rate in the minor leagues this year braxton davidson swith of braves i, 44.3% strikeouts. That's a lot. Second place, Dusty Coleman, Padres, AAA,

44.4% strikeouts. That's a lot. First place, minor leagues. These numbers do not change. The minor league season is over. First place strikeout rate with a strikeout rate of 54.5%. That's 10 points higher than second place.

We come back to Gareth Morgan, Mariners property, 343 plate appearances more than half of those ending in strikeouts gareth morgan a 66 wrc plus separated from second place by 10 percentage points in strikeout rate absolutely unbelievable yeah that's that's not good what what age level position do we need to know any of these things? Gareth Morgan is 22 years old, and he spent this season playing in Rookie Ball, Advanced A, and— well, no, those are—he had nine plate appearances in Rookie Ball where he struck out seven times, and he also batted 334 times in Advanced A, that's the Cal League,

and he struck out 180 times with 30 walks, but at least he was 7 out of 8 for stolen bases. That reminds me of the amazing line that Shaq Thompson posted for the Red Sox. This is, of course, the current linebacker for the Carolina Panthers of the NFL, but he was at one time an 18th round draft pick for the Red Sox in 2012. And he played center field that season for the Red Sox Rookie League team in the Gulf Coast League. And in that season, he was just 18, of course, and extremely raw. He had 47 plate appearances, 39 at-bats, and he struck out 37 times. 37 times in 39 at-b bats with eight walks, amazingly. And I remember writing about this at the time and being very delicate in how I was talking about it because I didn't want to success in another sport and is doing fine as I understand it. So probably doesn't spend a whole lot of time reliving his 18-year-old Gulf Coast League experience.

But now that we know that the story sort of had a happy ending, I am glad that that line exists forever on baseball reference. So we can go back and look at an actual professional player striking out 37 times in 39 at-bats. I agree. So I don't think there's anything else there. What happened over the weekend? So not a whole lot changed in the playoff races. The Mariners officially eliminated, and the Rays have— the A's are basically one win or Rays loss away from clinching their playoffs.

So nothing a whole lot going on there. Now, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective of things, Jacob deGrom got a win. So he's up to 500. His win total might still exceed his war. So that's just something to watch for the final week. But I'm looking at the second half here. Just second half pitching statistics, right?

And I looked up a minimum of 50 innings pitched. I would like to read you. So Jacob deGrom, second half ERA, 1.89. Very good. That pretty much matches his season ERA. I'm going to guess not the best on the mets possibly is that true he's fifth place in baseball fifth place in second half era with 1.89 i want to read you the top four and i'll go in i guess reverse order so from fourth to first fourth place zach wheeler you nailed that one i assume that's what you're getting at

third place clay buckholz second place blakenell, 1.11 second half ERA. He has vaulted into the AL Cy Young race. Maybe we'll talk about it in a minute. First place, Trevor Williams of the Pirates with an ERA of 1.08 over 11 starts in the second half with completely ordinary peripherals. I have nothing else to say about this, but for the fact that this is not the list that I expected

when I saw that Blake Snell had an ERA of 1.11 in the second half. No, not at all. Trevor Williams, podcast partner of our former guest, Stephen Brault. So maybe we'll have to have him on at some point just to complete the podcast. But yeah, that is kind of incredible. He started 30 games this year, which sort of surprised me and has started all of his games, hasn't pitched out of the bullpen at all. He initially came up as mostly a reliever a couple of years ago, and he has been fantastic.

And I don't know the full story there. So while we just kind of do a grab bag here, I feel like it's been a little while since we had a brian mitchell update you remember our brian updates he was very bad so he was silent for a long time he came back he came back to be a starter for the padres in september in in his first start he allowed one run in five innings the second start he allowed one run in six innings now over those starts he had five walks and four strikeouts so nothing too remarkable and in the most recent start brian mitchell at last zero walks four strikeouts in five innings sounding pretty good nine hits four runs two homers so not actually a good start for brian mitchell for the season his area is at 6.16 his peripherals basically match that 40 walks 31 strikeouts brian

mitchell just uh came back from the dead to continue to be dead. Now I don't want to bury Brian Mitchell. So I guess maybe we'll talk about this a little more moving forward when it's not the last weekend when we don't already have 50 minutes of a guest lined up in this episode. But one of the things that is becoming increasingly true when we're talking about Cy Young voting is that more than ever, there's maybe an emphasis on trying to figure out the difference between quantity and quality. And you can see this, especially in the American League, this might come down. You've got Chris Sale, who has been exceptionally good, but is not at present actually qualified for the ERA title in the American League because he has missed some time. Chris Sale has missed time. Trevor Bauer has missed time. Blake Snell has missed time. Justin Verlander has not missed time. And so if you look at in the American League

right now, Justin Verlander is the leader in fangrass war. He's thrown 208 innings. And but he's basically tied with Chris Sale, who's thrown 153 innings. And then if you keep going down, like Blake Snell has the lowest ERA in the American League, but he's thrown 175 innings. And so it's going to be interesting. And I can't say too much because I am a voter in this award, and I don't know which way I'm going to go. But it'll be interesting to see how people choose to favor Justin Verlander is going to finish with between like 30 and 50 more innings pitched than some of the other really

close contenders in the American League. And I, at this point, am not entirely certain how I want to treat that because you think that like war would give you the perfect balance because it shows you quality and quantity. It's a counting statistic, but I'm not sure if that's appropriate. Do you have any insights as you help me in my voting considerations? Yeah. I mean, I haven't decided who I think the winners should be of various awards, and I'm sure we'll talk about that later in the year, but it is getting more complicated. It's true. And you would think that with the stats that we have today, these things would be getting less complicated.

And in fact, the opposite seems to be happening, both because I guess we have multiple ways of calculating value, and we have other stats that enable us to drill down even more. And then we have teams using starters and their entire pitching staffs differently. So you have to try who has to go through the third time through the order a whole lot and then you have another guy who never does, then that seems like something that you probably have to factor in there. Or, you know, maybe the opponent quality if someone has racked up a lot of great innings against the AL Central, for instance. So it is really kind of hard to say. I mean, I think Sale, even at whatever he ends up at, 155, 160 innings, he's a very compelling candidate, just like Kershaw was a couple of years ago when he didn't have a lot of innings but had been amazing in those innings. So it is a tough thing to value. I don't have a great recommendation for you yet. Yeah, I was hoping this was going to be easier. I feel like there was a lot of focus on Chris Sale. Trevor Bauer, I think, kind of faded a little bit, because if you're going to vote for Bauer, I think you would just vote for Sale. And then I started

to see a lot of favoritism for Verlander, because he's already started 33 games, and he's at 208 innings. But because of the way that Blake Snell is finished, this is something that I am going to have to confront. And now with Cy Young voting, I think you list the Snell is finished, this is something that I am going to have to confront. And now with Cy Young voting, I think you list the top five anyway. So this is going to be – so I have only ever voted for Rookie of the Year, which was quite easy compared to this. I wish that I had the Rookie of the Year vote again so that I could just give a little Otani shout-out one more time and maybe find a way to slide Astadillo on there and make everybody upset. But the Cy Young one is going to be hard because there's only one week left,

and these numbers are not going to change very much. There is a responsibility that comes when you actually have a vote for these awards. It suddenly becomes so much more complicated than you think it is when you're just someone who criticizes the way that the voters vote. When you're just a blogger, you're like, how could they possibly do that? But then when you have one, you're like, oh, this is actually hard, the voters vote. You know, when you're just a blogger, you're like, how could they possibly do that? But then when you have one, you're like, oh, this is actually hard and this matters. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I know that there has been precedent for Cy Young contenders with low innings totals, but I don't know that we've seen one. I mean, I know Rick Sutcliffe won the award in 1984 when he had 150 or so innings in the NL. But he, of course, had also already pitched almost 100 innings in the AL, and he had changed leagues. And so he was a regular starter with a heavy workload at that time. So I think you have to go to Clayton Kershaw, I think, in 2014. He won a side with just a little less than 200, and I think that's it. I don't know that anyone has won one with fewer innings pitched.

And so, I mean, you're going to have to see that start to happen because starters are just not throwing as many innings, and you only have a few guys who are getting up into that stratospheric level. I mean, last year, no one got to 215 innings in either league. And I think a few guys might get to the 220 range this year, but that's basically the ceiling and you're seeing fewer and fewer guys even get to 200. There was just a huge downturn just a couple years ago i think joe sheehan just documented this in his newsletter but it was like you know in 2013 there were 36 200 inning seasons 2014 there were 34 2015 there were 28 2016 15 and also 15 last year. So it was like suddenly that 2015 to 2016 transition, teams just decided we are not going to do this anymore. I don't know whether that was because of

maybe just paying more attention to third times through the order or what, but it seems like there was suddenly a sea change there and we're just not seeing that sort of usage before. So in the same way that I think Hall of Fame voters have to adjust their expectations for what constitutes a Hall of Fame pitcher in this era, we kind of have to do the same things for single season awards. Yeah. Well, I think we've talked enough. Yeah. And yet at the same time, the leaders in the NL Cy Young race are way ahead of the position players in the MVP race. So it seems like despite the fact that pitchers are, on the whole, throwing fewer innings in the NL, at least the best, most valuable players are just primarily pitchers, including our pal Kyle Freeland, who continues to pitch well. He pitched another seven shutout innings yesterday, and he's probably like fourth in that race.

So that is quite a field. We've talked a lot in the past about the whole MVP argument of whether a player deserves the MVP if he's on, I don't know, let's call them the Angels, a team that doesn't make the playoffs repeatedly. But the National League MVP vote is going to be very interesting. And now it's going to be easy to give it to someone like Kristen Yelich or Matt Carpenter or whoever you want. But if you look at wins above replacement, there's a very compelling argument that the

National League's most valuable player has been Jacob deGrom, who has been credited with only nine wins. And so this is going to be an interesting test case for the value of context-neutral statistics or whether people figure or whether enough people figure. Not only is DeGrom a pitcher, which puts him up against it in his MVP odds, but the fact that the Mets haven't won games where Jacob DeGrom has started, I don't know how I would balance that if I had a vote. That would be really complicated.

These are the thought experiments. You can really just think yourself into circles. But how much value can you provide when you are great and your team still doesn't win? And I am not convinced that we have a really great answer to that, but I could also become convinced pretty quickly that we do. And maybe I'm just not thinking of it right now. All right. So we have a guest, as you mentioned earlier, and it's the last week of the season. You might think we'd be talking about pennant races or something, but really there aren't a whole lot of them to talk about. And the ones that there are, we have talked about. And for a lot of contenders, this last week is about trying to get guys healthy.

And Yankees hoping that Didi Gregorius is okay and Astros hoping Charlie Morton is okay. So there are some races and maybe we'll discuss what happens there in the next week or so. But today we are talking to Levi Weaver, who covers the Rangers primarily for The Athletic. And we're having him on partly just because we like Levi and we like talking to Levi, but also because the Rangers fired Jeff Bannister last week. And we are going to talk about what that tells us about modern major league managers and what managers might look like in the future. We're going to talk about Bartolo Colon and Adrian Beltre.

We're going to talk about covering bad baseball teams. We're going to talk about a lot of subjects that I think will be of general interest, even though they are prompted by the Rangers. So we will take a quick break and we'll be back with Levi in just a moment. In the evening when the world is open, suns chase the sky to bed. We can whisper one more chapter into this book, but never it will be read. Till the final little page falls out we struggle to recover it trying to read what we forgot desperate for one more page to whisper in so the 2014 al manager of the year buck showalter

is reportedly on the way out and will probably be replaced this offseason. The 2015 AL Manager of the Year has already been fired, Jeff Bannister of the Rangers. And I made a joke in my outro last week about how I didn't think that we had mentioned Jeff Bannister's name this entire season before he was fired, but we're going to make up for that now. So we are welcoming in one of our favorite writers

who covers the Rangers and used to cover Jeff Bannister for the athletic Levi Weaver. Hey, Levi. Hey, guys. How's it going? Going well. So to me, this sort of story is really interesting because of what it says about leadership or baseball leadership. And you have a guy who won this award for being the best manager just three years ago. And then the year after that, the Rangers managed to

defy expectations and run differential and win their division. And people gave him credit for that, rightly or wrongly. And maybe it's because that's sort of a team award, the manager of the year award, as much as it is a manager award that you often do see guys go from winning that to kind of being out. But is it that or is it that certain leadership styles work well with certain teams and certain groups of players and then suddenly they stop working, which was it in Bannister's case? Yeah, I think it is kind of more of the latter that his leadership style in 2015 was exactly what they needed. His background is very much that of an underdog.

what they needed. His background is very much that of an underdog. When he was in high school, he had bone cancer in his leg and they told him that he was going to have to amputate it. And he fought through that and made it back onto the baseball field. And when he was in college, he was in a collision and broke three vertebrae in his neck. And he just sort of John Wayne'd his way back out onto the baseball field again. And he was like the living embodiment of the movie true grit for most of his career, made it to the big leagues for one at bat. And like, could he have done anything but beat out an infield single? Like, no, that's exactly what happened. So, so the 15 Rangers, they weren't supposed to beat the Astros. And in fact,

like when they traded for Cole Hamels, there was a lot of talk a week before, were they going to be sellers? Were they going to trade Giovanni Gallardo? They kept Gallardo. And then when they got Hamels, the talk was, well, it's kind of for this year, but it's mostly for the seasons to come.

And then they went on this remarkable, you know, comeback. They were the underdogs led by like King underdog himself. So he was, he was a really good fit for that 15 team. And honestly, probably for the 16 team as well. But as, as those sort of veterans began to, whether we age out, some of them went to other, so Mitch Moreland signed with the Red Sox. Colby Lewis was not offered a contract. Eventually Hugh Darvish was traded. Jonathan LeCroy was traded. They sort of dismantled the team and what you're left with is a bunch of young guys. And then Adrian Beltre, Elvis Andrews, and Shinsu Chu. And I just think that his communication style was a little bit combative. And again, that served him well for a lot of his life and a lot of his

career. But, you know, I talked to a lot of people, players and people in the organization that felt maybe a little confused by the fact that he would get sort of things that he looked at as iron sharpening iron, like there's no animus here, like I don't hate you, but also he seemed a little defensive at times. And so I just think that started to kind of wear on people. And especially young guys, I hate to like the millennials are killing Jeff Bannister's career here, but some of the younger guys I think were like maybe confused, like, hey man, we're on the same team. Like what's going on here? And then I think some of the older guys,

his, it maybe kind of started to wear on them too. In a, in a season where you're winning and you've got a cheerleader going, all right, we're going to war men. Let's kind of almost football coaching it. That's fine. If you're winning, that's great. You get a good, a feel good speech before and after every win. When you're losing and you start to get those same speeches, it can be like, come on, man. Like,

I know we're losing 85 to 90 games this year. Like we don't need another speech about leadership and, you know, something that you read in a, in a book or a quote that you pulled. So I just think that it was just a, he's a good fit for a sort of underdog team that's winning. And I just think he ended up being a bad fit for this team. And, also want to, in case he ends up hearing this for whatever reason, I don't think

he's a bad guy. He genuinely cared about his players. You could tell that. He would get emotional talking about players making their debut or players coming back from injury or the work that he saw people put in. I mean, Rugnet Odor made a great comeback in the second half of the season. And you could tell he genuinely cared about, you know, his players, his coaching, his fellow coaches. You could tell he cared about us when we walked in. He would ask about our personal lives and he would remember details. So it's not that he was a bad guy. It was just in the end, his communication style was what it was.

And I think that that was just no longer the right fit for this particular team when uh every so often when you have a team that's going through a rebuild or a team that fires its manager and then begins a rebuild you'll have the interim guy come in maybe you'll get a manager who's hired who's alleged to be good around young players and then when the team starts getting better than oftentimes the front office will go and say well we want to go find a veteran manager who can who can lead this team into into the race playing that there is a some sort of different kind of manager that teams want when a team is when a team is down and when a team is up so the rangers would be an example i guess of sort of the reverse of that a team that was good and and is now entering a rebuild i don't know if they've acknowledged it as such but in your intuition if not i don't know explicit observation do you think that the the

powers that be in texas figured that this would be the case with jeff banister do you think that they understood that he would not be quite as effective a manager with a younger team and a team that was out of the race or is this something this something that maybe they've learned on the fly like everybody else? Wow, that is a great question. And I mean, it would all be speculation for me to even guess. I think they're a pretty sharp group of guys. I mean, John Daniels doesn't really ever seem like he's surprised by much, but maybe he also just has a really good poker face, which I think both probably are true to some degree. I don't know. I wish I had a better answer for you than just like, wow, great question. I had not considered that.

Yeah, I don't know. Well, I was curious about something I read in Susan Slusser's column where she was looking up or speculating about potential replacements for him. about potential replacements for him. And she said something about how, you know, the next candidate needs to be well-versed in analytics and communicating, you know, numbers and data to players. And I was thinking, wasn't Jeff Bannister supposed to be good at that when he was hired? And I don't know whether that was a theme of the coverage at that time, but that was kind of the way I was thinking of him because he was coming over from the Pirates who had Clint Hurdle, who like Bannister was an older baseball guy who had been a player but had sort of seen the light and was working really well with the front office and communicating all this information. And so Bannister was coming

out of that way of managing. So I assumed that he would port that over that the Rangers hoped he would. So did he, do you think, or did that end up being something that was a weakness? No, I think he did. He didn't talk about it much, but if you ever sort of brought up the subject, as long as he felt like you weren't second guessing him with that topic, then you could get him to open up. It's not that he ever was dismissive of sort of advanced numbers or analytics. And he would tell you which ones he thought merited a conversation and which ones he dismissed. I think he picked and choose, he could pick and choose which ones he really felt were more indicative. And some of them he felt,

you know, would indicate past performance, but maybe weren't predictive. And then some of them he felt would indicate past performance, but maybe weren't predictive. And then some of them he did like. So I think it is important and Susan's not wrong. I think it is important that the next guy do that, but I don't think that necessarily means that Bannister didn't. He certainly was more into it. And I didn't cover the team when Ron Washington was the manager, but talking to some of the other beat writers and people that were around the team, Bannister definitely paid more attention to analytics than Walsh did. Walsh's strength was that he would get the team to run through walls for him. I mean, they just, the players loved Ron Washington. So, yeah, I mean, I think ideally you'll get somebody who's both, somebody that really makes a good connection with the players and is able to speak the language of these younger guys.

speak the language of these younger guys. And I didn't use the phrase, speak the language on purpose, but it kind of fits that like, I think maybe a bilingual candidate would be a good fit with the clubhouse. There's a lot of Latin American guys in there. And then somebody who also understands the advanced metrics and is able to take those numbers and apply them. And maybe it's a manager bench coach combo that you get one guy that is sort of the people person and then he listens really well to the other guy who's the numbers guy. And I do think we'll maybe start to see that and maybe have already begun to see that a little bit,

a trend where your bench coach becomes more important. He's not just the guy that's like making sure that all the little details are taken care of, but he's like in your ear going, here's this matchup and here's this number and here's what I've gotten from the analytics department. So I think, I mean, it's funny that I just sort of said the football coach mentality wasn't working,

but maybe more like football coaches where you're going to have your offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator. I think you will have more guys in the dugout with a bigger voice than they would have 10, 15 years ago. I wanted to ask about that a little bit as well, because before the year the Rangers hired Don Wakamatsu to be around, they hired Dan Worthen to be around. Of course, their responsibilities were more than just being around. They also had jobs and roles and everything. But Wakamatsu, of course,

has been a manager before, been a manager of a bad baseball team before. I watched it a lot. They were very bad. And I was wondering, in your observation, you know, we talk about Jeff Bannister. He's out of a job. He was the guy and maybe a lot of the team didn't get along with him, didn't appreciate his style, etc. But of course, Jeff Bannister was not the only coaching voice. He was the highest ranking coaching voice. But in your observation, how does that hierarchy kind of work? Could Bannister have maybe delegated some sort of communication to Wakamatsu? Could there just be different voices from the coaching staff communicating maybe the same message in different ways to different players? Or is it ultimately just all come down to Bannister where he's the guy and he's got to

be responsible for everything that happens here? I mean, I do think that there was some delegation, but I don't think, honestly, I think that that's why Wakamatsu was brought in and it was Bannister that brought him in, but there was kind of an edict from the front office like, hey, we're hearing these issues with the communication style and you need to be able to delegate more. And Bannister admitted that.

I just think that, I think what you're describing is probably the way that they hoped that it would work and that it just didn't. Maybe is that, is that like when the delegation began to break down a little bit or, you know, maybe if the delegation was happening and Bannister felt too disconnected, I don't know. I'm kind of guessing at that point too. But what has been interesting is to hear Wakamatsu talk in the last couple of days. And I know like, yes, it's a pre-audition for a job, right? Like he has, he freely admits like, yeah, I want an interview. I would like to be the next manager. And I hopefully will prove that I can do that in the next, I mean, he's got 10 games total, right? But to hear him talk about his leadership style being more like,

I prefer to just let those 25 guys kind of create their own culture and then manage individually to the player instead of trying to make them sort of fall in line under my vision that I'm casting as the leader. And that sounded like, I don't think he intended to be really pointed at Jeff Bannister when he said that, but it sounded like a fairly pointed comment to say it that way. So I don't know if Wok is going to be the next guy or not, but I do think somebody who communicates that way, that kind of doesn't have to have his finger in every pie, so to speak, is probably what we'll see next. And you do historically tend to see the hard-ass disciplinarian. He comes in and maybe he tightens the ship and he wins for a while and then it gets abrasive and then he's out and then

you replace him with a player's manager who's more easygoing and then the whole cycle repeats itself. And I think it's been said for a long time that, well, younger players, you know, they don't respond well to the hard-ass style anymore. And I mean, people have been saying that for long enough that the younger players of then are, you know, retired now. Yeah. So I don't know whether it is true with each successive generation. There's less tolerance or receptiveness to that type of style. And so, you know, maybe even Jeff Bannister would be the players manager of decades ago comparing him to.

Right. So, I mean, I guess we're just gonna keep seeing that like you know i don't know is there still room in baseball for a jeff bannister style manager or is it that you know the the young players of today well tomorrow's veteran teams will be made of today's young players and if today's young players don't respond to that style maybe they won't when they're older either or who knows maybe as you get older you do get more of a tolerance for that and you want that kind of leadership style. So I don't know. Do you think there will be more Jeff Bannisters with other teams in the future? I think we're nearing the end of it. I don't think we are at the end of it

just yet. I think you're probably going to find a team that goes, you know what we need? We need to throw it back. We need to throw a real old school throwback manager here. But Bannister wasn't the only one. Mike Matheny in St. Louis was kind of a similar ilk and he's out. Showalter is on his way out. So it's not just about Jeff Bannister, the man. I think it is kind of a sea change that we're seeing. And I don't know if we're at the end of it yet, but I think we're getting close. Is there any sort of thought, I guess, organizationally? You have young players mostly coming out of the Rangers system. They get up to the majors.

They would experience a manager like Jeff Baxter, and some of them wouldn't maybe see eye to eye with that. But is there any sort of organizational consideration to having managers of different styles at every level so that you kind of develop on the field and you also develop the people you're becoming accustomed to off the field? Yeah, I haven't really heard any of that. And this front office is fairly tight-lipped about a lot of things. Although I feel like maybe that's a question I should ask Jace Tingler, a lot of things. Although I feel like maybe that's a question I should ask Jace Tingler, because he's very involved in a lot of the minor league coaching and development. And I think he would probably, I think he would answer that question, honestly, if I asked him. But I mean, I just, I hadn't really considered that as a question before. Now, I think there's value to

it for sure, that I think that you should, as these kids are coming up, help them develop, like you said, not just baseball skills, but kind of life skills. You're going to have different bosses, whether that's in baseball or after baseball, you're always going to have to learn to interact with somebody. Yeah. I wonder if, I mean, you have so many coaches on each team anyway, and then you're also dealing with your fellow players. So if I'm playing devil's advocate on this, maybe some of the development happens from those other coaches, but maybe you want a manager that is able to help them become the best baseball players and the best people. And maybe there isn't one single type that does that. So you guys have a really good skill of kind of talking me into a corner or asking a question that makes me talk myself into a corner.

I just sort of listen. I just keep serving up softballs here. Right? I feel like I hear these great questions. I'm like, wow, I am a huge idiot for not having thought of that before. That's a great question. Well, here's what you probably thought of before. This will be John Daniels' third managerial search, which is not something a lot of GMs get to do.

Does he just have that job for life, basically? Can he just weather another rebuilding cycle and stay there as long as he wants? I think so. I mean, not for life, obviously, but I'll talk to people in other organizations and around the industry, and they're like, yeah, I mean, he basically has king-like powers, and he can do whatever he wants. Ownership really, really believes in him. And so yeah,, I think at very least he's going to get to see this rebuild through because this is only the second really rebuild that he did. And the first one took them to two World Series and they were contenders for, you know, eight of 10

years or however many it was. So, yeah, I think he's probably going to get a chance to do another one. Now, if this goes poorly and they're still really bad when they get into the new stadium and then a year beyond that, they're still really bad, then okay, that failed. And also, you've hired a third manager and we're kind of dead in the water. So we're going to have to rebuild from the rebuild. Let's bring in somebody else to do that. But I do think he absolutely gets to see the rebuild through and gets through at least 2020 before that even starts to become a hot seat. So I have a two-part question. First question, very easy. Don't have to talk yourself into a corner on this one.

Yes or no, have you ever had a vote for manager of the year? No. In fact, this is my first season as actually a member of the Baseball Raiders Association. So I have an A.L. Cy Young award vote this year. Oh, yeah, you and me both. We can – Oh, both. We should collude and try to cancel one another out. Okay, so the second part, I guess. So you haven't voted for Manager of the Year. Every year,

I cringe in anticipation that that will be the first year I get that award because I have absolutely no idea what to do with it. And I haven't done a whole lot of Cy Young research yet. I don't know if you have, but we have the standard numbers that we'll go to. We know how to research which pitchers have been better than others, which pitchers we feel more comfortable with. But with managers, of course, we don't have that much information. We've got wins and losses. In your case, you've got observations for how one manager did or did not interact well with his team. How much of an effect do you believe that a manager has on a team? And how comfortable do you think you would be in being able to identify who has had

the greatest positive effects? I think on some level, the manager doesn't maybe matter a ton. I think if you've got a great team, at that point, you don't need a manager that's really, I think if you've got a great team, at that point, you don't need a manager that's really, really good at X's and O's and just a master tactician. You basically just need somebody to make sure it doesn't go into the ditch, right? Like you're putting out fires and might as well hire just a psychologist. Like just don't let the players get in their own way. I mean, I think that anyway. So I feel like I would have to talk to maybe talk to players in, in each clubhouse. I do think I'm probably enough of a traditionalist that if a team finishes,

you know, below 500 and I probably wouldn't vote for that manager for manager of the year, because like they could have ended up with a losing record either way. I think it would have to be somebody who either wins, probably playoff spots. So I would probably want to vote for somebody who's, who's team, you know, one, But I don't know. I think I would have to talk to players and just kind of, or maybe even beat writers that cover that because I don't know the players who trust an outside beat writer. Yeah, I would talk to the beats, maybe narrow it down to four or five guys based on wins and then talk to them like, let's look at the potential of the team. Did we think this team was going to contend? Did they surprise us? But again, I don't know that that answers your question because maybe they

were overachievers just because they had good leaders that were players, or maybe it's a statistical anomaly. I can see why that's one of those that you would not want to be responsible for voting for. Now you've given me a phobia, Jeff, that I didn't have before. Oh my God. It's staggering. I go to bed some nights just dreading that email. You go to clubhouses at least. You talk to these people. I'm never in a clubhouse.

What am I? Anyway, I'll worry about that when it gets there. Yeah. I have the same phobia. If we're on the same rotation, then maybe we'll both get that email on the same day and we can just miserate. I will give you my vote. Shifting away from managers a little bit, I wanted to ask about the experience of covering Bartolo Colon and Adria Beltre in the twilights of their careers.

And we don't know if those careers are over. We hope that they are not. But Colon, of course, has not been pitching well and has been in the bullpen. And Beltre has been banged up a bit and doesn't seem to know if he's coming back. And both of those guys are, you know, among the most accomplished players in terms of career records, but are also two of the most beloved players and, you know, Twitter famous and most gift players. So what is the reality of covering those guys? Like just being around them? Are they like the gift personas or are they just kind of regular people up close?

You know, it's almost polar opposites covering them. They both seem very nice. Like I don't hear anybody complain about them. Bartolo though does like he only speaks after his starts and his answers are always very, very predictable. He's earned it. He's 46. He's talked to the media enough and probably as some rather unsavory details came out about his personal life and career, I could see where maybe he would not consider the media to be his friend. So he's not ever rude to us. He's always polite and he'll sort of give you a fist bump as he walks through the room, but he doesn't ever speak.

And I think he probably speaks some English, but never to us and never in our presence. So he is kind of a, he's kind of a dark curtain a little bit between him and us. Beltre on the other hand,, he'll joke that he hates talking to us, but he knows when we need to talk to him. When we don't need to talk to him, he's not there. After yesterday's final home game, obviously there was the big ceremony in the sixth inning. He knew, all right, this is a day that I need to talk to the media. So he's waiting at his locker and he's

ready to go. And his answers are always, he's incredibly, incredibly sharp and quick-witted. And so, you know, when he's injured, he doesn't want to really talk about being injured. And so he'll try to change the subject as much as possible. Or, you know, as the trade deadline was coming up, he would try to change the subject as much as possible. 3,000 hits, like all the things that we want to talk about. Obviously, everybody wants to talk about those things with him and he's bored with them and so he's trying to change the subject to other players or like hey you know how did you feel out there you were running getting close to coming back off the disabled list do you do you feel good you tell me like how did i look

and uh so yeah he's he's really quick he's funny like genuinely funny but also, there are times he knows that we don't need him. And he's like, sorry, I can't today. I'm really busy. And he's hurrying between stations, kind of avoiding us, because he knows. Like, not today, boys. But it is kind of polar opposites. I genuinely enjoy covering Beltre. And I think that's been a real highlight of this and every season.

Cologne has been great, just because I get a lot of Twitter engagement when I tweet about him. But, you know, I say that's been a real highlight of this and every season. Colon has been great just because I get a lot of Twitter engagement when I tweet about him. But, you know, I say that. I did get him to come talk to me once about his donkey poncho. So that I did. I did at least get him to come out into a dugout and talk about that. And his new tattoo. Yes. Yeah.

Actually, so the way that that works, the translator, Elena Ornelas, he's the Rangers Spanish radio broadcaster. He's kind of our go-between. So he's, we're asking like, Hey, you know, this tattoo thing, does he want to talk? And so Elena goes over and he talks to him quietly and in the corner. And then he comes back and he goes, he doesn't want to talk, but here's the story. And so he just like tells us the story. And so all of our quotes were in second person. Like he said he was going to get story. And so he just like tells us the story. And so all of our quotes were in second person. Like he said he was going to get it. And, uh, and so TR Sullivan, who's been around forever, uh, he's like the, the grizzled old veteran of the clubhouse. He goes, hang on.

And he's like scribbling in his notebook and he reads it back in first person. I was going to get this tattoo earlier this year, but I decided it was, it was too hot. And I waited until the off day. And we all kind of look around at each other, and we look at Alaino, and we're like, all right, so I guess that's a quote. Like, here we go. So he didn't want to talk to us, but at least gave us enough information. I was noticing that Beltre, even though he is 39 and has had leg issues and has been

on and off the DL, he has the second highest defensive run saved total of any third baseman this year after Matt Chapman. So I don't know whether that mirrors your observations, but statistically speaking, he's like as good on defense as he ever was. So wait, is that just in the American League or is that over all of baseball? No, everyone. He's better than Aaron Lotto. Yeah.

And that's like 583 innings or something. Like, you know, he hasn't spent a whole lot of time there. Holy cow. That's, I mean, I'm surprised that it's that high. Yeah. I'm not surprised that he's still good at defense. I mean, he's, he's still looks great when he's out there. He can definitely still play, play third base. I just thought with all the time that he had missed that that would have really cost him, but huh. That's amazing. that's amazing. You mentioned a little while ago that Bartolo Colon does not speak English with you as the media. And now, would you consider it maybe for the next generation of people coming up who want to cover teams, who want to be close to teams,

would you consider it almost a professional obligation to try to learn at least some sort of conversational Spanish? Because you figured so much of that. Yeah, you already see where this is going. Absolutely. Actually, I've got my Duolingo app every day. I'm on like a four-day streak right now. So I'm trying. I took Spanish in high school and spent a summer in Guatemala. So I can kind of get by a little bit, but it's really bad. And I recognize the need to improve. Yeah, absolutely. If you plan on covering baseball, learn Spanish. If you're going to be interacting with baseball players, learn Spanish. Because the teams provide them an

opportunity, and some teams sort of a mandatory opportunity, quote unquote, to learn English and encourage them to do so because it's beneficial for the team, I guess. But yeah, it's just so helpful to be able to kind of put guys at ease too. When young guys come up, they're so nervous about like, this is my first time in the big leagues. I don't want to say anything stupid. I don't want to look, how do I look? I'm on TV, maybe some of them for the first time you know if you can just put them at ease by stepping in and in their native language going like hey man welcome to the big leagues we're happy to have you we're not gonna we're not here to try to make you look

stupid like we'll make sure we get your quotes right so if you can speak English great but don't feel obligated I got you like if nothing else like as a reporter if I can establish that connection with a player then that is going to help me later if If I need a quote from that guy, or if I, you know, if he's got his headphones on and it's sort of one of those like, Oh yeah, no, I know he doesn't really want to talk, but I kind of need a quote. Like it's, it's going to be really helpful to me to establish that as part of the, part of the relationship. I wanted to ask you about Joey Gallo because he is a player who's fascinated all of us. And if someone were to look at his season stats and compare them to last year, you just say, oh, well, he's the same guy. He had the same season he had last year. But it has been a really wild season. Like in April, it looked like he was doing things differently. Like maybe he was trying to cut down on strikeouts. I remember reading a Jeff Sullivan post on that subject. And as it turns out, he's striking out just about as often as ever. But he has now raised his stats to where they were last year after a long slump by being one of the very best best qualified hitter in the second half in all baseball in WRC plus so was there an approach change there and he went back to what was working for him

before or has he done things differently or what is his future I've been wondering that for years man I have to I do think he just kind of needed the all-star break I think he was in his own head a little bit because of the extended slump and he told us a week or two after the all-star break. I think he was in his own head a little bit because of the extended slump. And he told us a week or two after the all-star break that like, yeah, just getting away, like he, and I believe it was Mazzara and Guzman and maybe Delano DeShields went to Mexico and just like hung out for three days. And he's like, I just needed that. I needed to get away from baseball, clear my head a little bit. I think early on what was kind of causing maybe some of the slump or at least causing him to be frustrated was some of the really ridiculous shifts you were seeing you were seeing like four outfielders and none of them further than like left center field

like they're all out in yeah sort of left center to to like you you're playing foul pole fielder and you are playing like extreme right fielder and you're playing right fielder. And everyone's like, you know, fans going, why, why doesn't he just bunt for a double down the left field line? And he's like, cause I have never done that in my life. And I'm trying to learn how to bunt, but it's, it's a skill. Like it looks easy, but when you've got, you know, Justin Verlander throwing 99 miles an hour with break, like, yeah, good luck fouling that knot into your face. And so he's, I think he was frustrated by that. And honestly, like who wouldn't be frustrated if the other team goes here, here's half the field. We dare you to hit it there and you can't.

That's got to be incredibly frustrating. dare you to hit it there and you can't, that's got to be incredibly frustrating. I think probably what helped, you know, beyond just getting away was, yeah, I think kind of just returning to, you know what, they don't put any outfielders over the fence. I'm going to hit it over there and score some runs. And that's just, I think that's just who he is. Like he's going to strike out 200 times a year. He's going to hit 40 plus bombs a year. And that's just who you get. And as long as he's walking as much as he is, as long as his on-base percentage is in that sort of mid threes, I think that's fine. I think that's just who he is. And I think that's a very productive part of a baseball team. Now you can't make the whole team out of Joey Gallo. You can't have nine guys

that are going to strike out four times a game, and then one game you get 27 home runs. But to have one of those or maybe two of those guys in your lineup, I think that's perfectly acceptable. So when looking at any baseball player, anyone this side of Mike Trout, you'll see a lot of variation month to month, week to week, half to half. That's just natural. You get a lot of statistical variation around a certain, let's call it, true talent. Now, if you look at, let's say, first and second half, you look at Rugnett Odor, you say, oh, he had kind of a slow first half, and he really picked it up in the second half. Now, if you look at it in reality, awesome July, really good August, terrible April,

terrible May, terrible September so far. Really good August. Terrible April, terrible May, terrible September so far. Rune and Odor seems to go beyond just your standard fluctuation around a statistical mean. And because you've had the ability to watch Rune and Odor up close, what do you think underlies just the fact that he is maybe the streakiest hitter that exists in the game today? Boy, I think it's easy to forget how young he still is, because he came up when he was 20. And for a time, even, you know, early, he was really good, really young. And I think he still is just kind of growing up and still learning to be mature. And, you know, I did an article on Tony Beasley, who was very influential in pulling Ruggie out of that extended like year and a half slump that he went through.

And working with him on defense and working with him on pitch recognition. And I think he just didn't realize how much, because he was kind of a natural talent as a kid and as a young player, I don't think he realized how much extra work goes into being a consistent player. And so I kind of thought, you know, in July, August, I thought, okay, he's figured it out. He's figured out how to be consistently good. September has, like you said, been a huge regression. And part of me wonders if maybe that is, if we want to circle the whole conversation back to Jeff Bannister, that in a clubhouse where everybody is starting to kind of go, oh, this season, like, can we just tap out? Like, this is a bad season. Everybody's unhappy. I may be way off base here. And if you ask Rugnet Odor this question, I'm sure you would probably get a different answer. But I think part of it is just that he's tired. I mean, he put in a lot of work

to get back to being a good player. And I just think it's probably fatigue, whether that be mentally or physically or both. It'll be interesting to me to see what happens in 2019 with kind of like, okay, you did it, you broke out of your long slump. And sure, the end of last season was rough, but like, what is this season going to be? Everybody asked if this season was going to be career defining for Ruknett, and I didn't think that it would be. Next season, I kind of think might be. And one more player specific question for me, Jerkson Profar, who has been, I think, one of the nicest stories in baseball this year, although not really one of the best known ones. But he is someone I think a lot of people had given up on. He was obviously a top prospect, the top prospect, and had had tons of injuries and

hadn't hit when he was quote-unquote healthy. And this year he has been healthy. He has hit. He's been an above-average hitter. He's been a good defender. He's just been a good player, period, at 25 or whatever he is now. And I wonder, are the Rangers looking at him as kind of a cornerstone as he was meant to be originally? Or is he someone who might be moved as he heads into arbitration years? Or, you know, just what produced this season other than just health? Maybe that's the whole answer. Yeah, this is his first year to be a kind of an everyday player in the big leagues. You know, six years or whatever after

his big league debut i think they're probably i don't know if they're looking at him as a cornerstone per se but i do think that they see him as the heir apparent at third base if adrian beltray doesn't come back and he's you know as beltray has played more dh this season it's been profar at third base except for when when Andrews was injured and Profar was at shortstop and Isaiah Canafalefa was at third base. There's been a lot of moving around this year. But yeah, I think they probably see him as the starting third baseman next year and for however long he sticks. So one of the things that the Rangers have been messing around with lately, somewhat out of necessity, but maybe also out of curiosity, is the opener. They've

started, I think, with Connor Sadwick. They've also started with Jeffrey Springs. Jeffrey Springs. I guess not a whole lot of people go by Jeffrey. A lot of us prefer Jeff. But now, as you have watched this unfold up close, the Rangers' second half, they've been out of the hunt since, I don't know, May. Rangers not playing for a whole lot. So maybe this is just kind of experimenting.

But what have you observed about the conversation around using the opener? And clearly, in order for the Rangers to use it, that's demonstrating a certain amount of open mindedness. But do you think this is something that continues on forward? Do you think that it's something that's worth the trouble? Is it any trouble? Just what have you what have you seen up close? I think it's really fascinating. Actually, it's one of those, like, I think it has the potential to be revolutionary, and it could change the way that we think of starting pitching and maybe even pitching at all. Maybe at some point there is no such thing as a starter

or that it's a rare thing, and maybe these swing guys that can do two to three innings every two to three days become more prevalent. I don't know. I think we're right in such early stages that it's hard to quantify the success of it. And I just think we need a bigger sample size. But even in getting a bigger sample size, you're going, okay, well, does it count as an opener if, as we've seen a couple of times this year, the guy goes three innings? At some point, that's kind of a starter, isn't it?

Or do we just count when they go one inning? And if they do go one inning and they go one, two, three, and they've only thrown six pitches, should we change course mid-strike? We were only planning on having him pitch one inning, but it was so fast. If he can get through that four, five, six, then your starter can jump in on your 7, 8, 9,

and he can go a little deeper in the game. And I think we're just so early in all of it that we just won't know for a while. But at some point, I mean, trust the calculators. Like somebody's going to be able to figure out how to quantify it and decide either, you know, yes, it's successful or yes, it's successful, but only if you do it in this particular way or no, that was a cool idea, but it just doesn't work. It's better with starting pitching. I'm just, I'm kind of like along for the ride a little bit and enjoying seeing how different people employ it differently. And just even some of the minor details of like, okay, what happens if your opener struggles and he lets the first two guys on board

and he's wild and like clearly doesn't have it today. Do you go ahead and bring your starter in in the first inning now with runners on base or do you bring in like a second opener? Does your starting pitcher come out of, credit to Jeff Bannister for this, like he brought up this question, does your starter, quote unquote starter,

in the second inning come out of the bullpen or does he come out of the dugout? Like even tiny little details like that are all open for discussion right now. And I think it's fascinating. So last thing I wanted to ask you, you wrote one of my favorite stories of the season. Last month, you concluded a months long investigation into the mysterious teammate who sprained Jeff Baker's thumb in an over-exuberant high five in 2013. You also went mega viral with your discovery or rediscovery of the two Brady's Feigl, Brady Feigl, the Rangers minor leaguer, Brady Feigl, the A's minor leaguer, both pitchers who look exactly the same.

Are these stories that you think you would have noticed or been able to pursue if the Rangers were a good baseball team? Does bad baseball equal good baseball writing to a certain extent? I would prefer to cover a winning team because it's fun. It's fun to talk to players who are happy to be at work every day. It's fun to write stories that people are looking forward to reading because they're excited about the team. Like that is fun. Covering a losing team definitely is, I think, a skill of its own that I am learning. And yeah, it does force you to be a bit more creative and go like, okay. And honestly, working for The Athletic has also been very helpful to me

because they kind of give you that leeway of like, we don't need a game story every day. Like if the Rangers went out and in a losing season in a game that doesn't matter against the San Diego Padres and they lose, if they look bad, like who cares? You don't have to write that game

or you can come up with something else that's more interesting to write. So kind of a combination of the two a little bit that I'm given the freedom to kind of make up my own workload and what that looks like. But yeah, I think you are onto something that covering a team that's not winning does, you know, you still need readers. If nobody's reading, then you are redundant and unnecessary. So you've got to come up with something that's going to cause people to read your stories and in my case, subscribe. It's something that's going to cause people to read your stories and, in my case, subscribe.

Yeah. Before we started recording, you were telling me about how the Brady Feigl discovery changed your life or changed how you had to treat Twitter. Could you share that? It wrecked my life. By the time it was all said and done, no offense to the Brady's Feigl, but I hated them both. I was just so angry that their parents had done this to me personally, a baseball writer who was just trying to get some likes on Twitter. Yeah, like I didn't end up even writing the story because I wanted to talk to the guys before I wrote it and kind of get a little bit more research. And so by the time I was able to get both of them on the

phone, it was only like three days. But by that point in time, like everybody had written the story, the tweet went viral. It was even in like the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom, I discovered had written the story. And like, that's great that I'm getting all this credit on Twitter. But like, I wish that I just sat on that discovery and written the story first, and then tweeted about it. So lesson learned there. Yeah, like I had to mute notifications for that tweet and so if if you have replied to me on twitter from that tweet i'm sorry i don't see it anymore i've cut them out of my life i remember one of the most astonishing things is that actually one of the brady flagels has been dead for 40 years but i was you mentioned it uh briefly but i so bennett asked whether you know

writing for about a losing team frees things up and then you mentioned the athletic a little bit now i understand of course because you you work for the athletic and you are in no position you're maybe not the most objective source but i was i was curious what just in general how how working with the athletic has met or has been different from what you expected going in because Because of course, when you become sort of a team beat writer, you probably don't expect to be researching Brady's Feigl or to be researching who injured who giving a high five. So has, I don't know, I guess just to basically compare and contrast your expectations with the reality of taking the job that you have, because I would

imagine that pretty much everyone who works for The Athletic is kind of figuring it out as they go along. It's a very, very new media company. Oh, for sure. But I think I was doing a lot of weird stuff even before I came on with The Athletic. I did an eight-minute fake documentary about the history of the dot race last year and assigned each of them personalities. It was amazing. I got eckersley involved uh i was able to get steve stone to do some stuff from the white socks and then um i ended up like everybody around the rangers i was able to get involved i got uh pudge rodriguez to talk about they uh what was he said the uh i don't know i got steve buchel to say that they tricked

pudge rodriguez into thinking that uh the skittles were the red dots babies or something like i don't remember exactly what the story was like but like i got like hall of famer pudge rodriguez i got him to say like what we were eating babies like baby dots so uh so i think maybe like i was just sort of prone to that level of baseball adjacent weirdness anyway because i mean my background was in music. And when I started doing the beat writing thing, I knew that if I just tried to be like a straightforward beat writer, I was going to be behind. Like, I'm not just going to jump in on year one and be as good as T.R. Sullivan and Evan Grant and Jeff Wilson at their job. So I had to kind of like, okay,

well, what can I bring to the table? Like, well, I definitely have heard of drill on Twitter. Like at least I have a little bit of a, uh, more of a bent towards abstract humor than these guys. And so maybe there's an audience for that. And, you know, maybe I can just write like these very, like I love Roger Angel.

I never know how to pronounce his name. Um, Angel, I think Angel. Okay. That's, that's good. Cause he is an

angel um yeah like i love reading him and like can i can i take some of these you know the the writing style that i had for for music or songs and like apply that and so i think just being at the athletic has allowed me to be to sharpen that a little bit and maybe not get so abstract in places because i'm worried like okay well ken Rosenthal might actually read this. So like maybe, maybe let's ease up on some of the references to like BoJack Horseman, but, but then also like just be yourself and be the best version of you that you can be. So, so yeah, as far as like the athletic goes though, I've been, it has exceeded my expectations. I talked to a couple of the other guys and they're like, however good you expect that this is going to be, it's like, it's better than that.

So, and I know that I, you're right, I'm biased. And I'm certainly, if I was not happy with it or if I had beef, it's not like I'm going to jump on here and be like, oh, the athletic sucks. And the leadership is terrible. I'm like, and I hope they don't fire me for saying this. No, but I, I don't know. I would probably just say less if I was unhappy with it. And, um, and no, like I'm, I'm, I'm super happy that they hired me and I feel really, really lucky. So good. Yeah. And I know that you are

working on collecting links from all the athletic baseball writers of their favorite season. So that'll be up maybe by the time this podcast is up. don't know but sometime soon yeah yeah i think it might be right now as a matter of fact so cool reading material for days i guess if you haven't been reading all season long there's near nearly 200 links in this so this is like off season like bookmark it and you can just read about baseball all off season long yeah and you can of course read read Levi's Writing on baseball as well At the athletic I guess the athletic Gallus Fort Worth specifically And you can find him on

Twitter at 3toephus Where he goes viral and then Mutes everyone every now and then So thank you for coming on Of course hey thank you always happy To do it you can support the podcast On Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount

as have the following five listeners, Milk Shapiro, Derek Dixon, Matthew Court, Linus Marco, and Kevin O'Connor. Not my coworker, Kevin O'Connor, I believe, though I'm sure he supports the podcast too in his own way. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And please keep your questions and comments and feedback for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastatpangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. We will be back to talk to you later this week. Let yourself be frozen by doubt

Think I'm mean cause I call you out You don't know what you're about The worst part's almost over now Worst part's almost over now. World's Bar's almost over now. Now. Now.