Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1291: Power Ball to the People

Episode Date: November 3, 2018

Ben Lindbergh, Jeff Sullivan, and ESPN’s Sam Miller recap the results of their 2018 minor league free agent draft and the surprising season of Wade LeBlanc, banter about Willians Astudillo and Delmon Young, discuss the defining memory of the 2018 season (and other seasons), and react to Clayton Kershaw’s contract extension. Then (28:54) they bring […]

Say hello, say hello my darling Don't bite your nails, don't bite your nails, keep talking The words in your heart belong on your tongue Yeah, they got to be someone else yeah, they got to be someone else Yeah, they got to Yeah, they got to Oh, oh Hello and welcome to episode 1291 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fan Graphs. Hello, Jeff. Hello. And we are all joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hey, Ben. Later in this episode. Excuse me? Not too much later. Oh, yeah, you didn't say hey, Jeff. You didn't say hey to me. Oh, that's true. I just said hey. Yeah. Also, you weren't part of it yet. Wow. Co-host drama. Okay. It's really flaring up. All right. So later we are going to talk to Rob Neier about his book, Powerball. But first, Rob's not here yet.

We are going to talk about a couple things, but I know that the main reason you are here, Sam, is to take a victory lap and a well-deserved victory lap because as people remember our most recent minor league free agent draft happened in january episode 1166 the three of us each chose 10 minor league free agents as we do every year and the free agents who get major league service time every plate appearance or batter faced counts and you wiped the floor with us you had a historic performance in the annals of minor league free agent drafts yeah quadruple digits oh man the final tallies 1240 combined plate appearances or batters face for you 435 for me 203 for jeff and you hit on five guys i hit hit on four guys, I guess. So in that sense, the success rate was not so different.

But all of your guys. I knew you were going to do that. I knew you were going to do that. Last year. Do you remember last year? I did have some excuse last year. You claimed that if you took away my number one guy, it would have been close, is what you said.

Well, I could say the same now because your number one guy who was not actually your number one pick he was your sixth sixth i think i was going to very humbly acknowledge that i feel a little bit like the cardinals drafting albert pools in the 13th round it's if i'm so smart why didn't i draft him in the 12th or the 11th? But now I'm not even going to be humble because you're being, you're forcing humility on me. Yeah. Wade LeBlanc. Wade LeBlanc.

The best pick. The best pick in minor league trade draft history. But so what happens if you remove Wade LeBlanc? You still win. I still win by plenty. Yeah. And that's not even getting into if we remove your best guy who. Ronnie Rodriguez.

Who is a meager 206. Yeah. Would have been third on my team. 662. That talent is usually not out there in this draft. Yeah. Do you remember your thought process for selecting Wade LeBlanc? Yeah, no, I was just thinking, well, that's Wade LeBlanc.

I guess that's the best way to approach this. Maybe that is the best way to approach this. I think that, well, there was a little bit of discussion about it at the time because Wade LeBlanc, it wasn't clear why Wade LeBlanc was a minor league free agent. And we tried to figure it out in real time time or maybe i tried to figure it out in real time because it appeared that he had he had actually ended the season on a major league roster which would make him not a minor league free agent minor league free agents are people who do not end the season on a major league roster as i understood it and he played all you know pretty much all of

last year all of 2017 in the majors as a reliever. I mean, you know, he faced 283 batters in 2017. And he somehow snuck onto the list. And I we were wondering at the time whether he had maybe been optioned in the final two days of the season somehow, or DFA in the final two days of the season somehow for some reason that we wouldn't have known but he was a sort of a strange person to have a bit like when you see wade leblanc on there you just lump him in with you know all the other pitchers from 2013 who never officially announced their retirement or had a 6.3 eraRA in AAA last year. Because you're not spending much of your time thinking about Wade LeBlanc's major league success in 2017.

But there it was. He was fairly successful in 2017. I think about Wade LeBlanc all the time. I'm sorry. Okay, his FIP from 2017 to 2018. And I should say in 2018, Wade LeBlanc started a career-high 27 games after last year starting zero games.

His FIP was exactly the same. His hits per nine moved by a tenth of a point. His home runs per nine didn't move. His walks per nine moved by a tenth of a point. His strikeouts per nine moved by a tenth of a point. Strikeout to walk ratio moved by a tenth of a point. His ERA dropped by three-quarters of a run. It's just magnificent foresight

although i do wonder if he wasn't if for whatever reason we find out he was just improperly listed you still would have won yeah granted but this whole conversation is different it's a little like a performance enhancing drug i did not categorize these these players though he was on the list i took what the universe handed to me which is a a regular major leaguer who had just pitched a full season with a perfectly reasonable 4.2 fit and uh you know career of being on rosters so it's it's not it's not like i stashed you know like various 500500 bills throughout the house for when I'm playing Monopoly someday. Like, Wade LeBlanc is just part of the game. I rolled Wade LeBlanc.

Anyway, you guys are jerks. He's a qualified starter. I beat you anyway. Wade LeBlanc for the first time in his career. And remember, Jeff, your best player would have been fifth on my team What are you talking about? I'm saying you cleaned my clock I'm just really living in awe of what happened

There was no... Wade LeBlanc being on a major league roster Absolutely A couple spot starts No problem He signed with the Yankees in January Did he remember that? I didn't remember that

Did he remember that? I didn't remember that He signed with the Yankees in January. Did you remember that? I didn't remember that. Did you remember that? I didn't remember that. He signed with the Yankees in January to a minor league contract. Then they assigned him to Scranton, whatever. And then they released him in March. And then the Mariners are like, we're going to have you throw more innings than anyone in franchise history has ever thrown. Probably. Well, it was, I mean, I got really, the luck was not that wade leblanc was available i'm sure that

for the most part it's not like we finished recording that episode and uh you know hit end record and then you guys both went well it's over you got wade leblanc the the the luck that i got was that for some reason even though he wasn't a very good reliever for the mariners for some reason on may 3rd they needed him to start and he threw four shutout innings and so then they let him start again and he threw five innings and allowed one run and then they let him start again and he threw six shutout innings and really from that point on it wasn't a good season exactly but you know you start with you start with good numbers and they stay pretty good for a long time. I mean, I was just banking start.

At some point, he had faced like 212 batters, and I was just rooting for him to survive starts. And finally, he realized, oh, he's going to make it. He's going to get there. You could have taken Wade LeBlanc and just passed on all your other nine picks, and you would have won the draft. I could have, but the joy that I did not feel particular joy about Wade LeBlanc's season, although I did call you or send you a message

when I passed 1,000 for the first time in league history. But the joy I felt was all Richard Rodriguez because Richard Rodriguez was not just pitching, but he was a stud. I mean, he was the sort of guy that you could write blog posts about for non-minor league free agent draft reasons. And I don't know if you guys remember the backstory of him, but he had,

I think he had maybe been released by whatever team he was with, which was the Orioles. So the Orioles released him last year with his 14.29 ERA. And then he went to, I think, the Venezuelan Winter League yeah i know the dominican winter and he struck out 30 and walked two in 21 innings and i said wow and and then like through the first couple months of the season he had like like 30 strikes and two walks through 21 innings or something like that and it was uh he was really good throughout the year so he and he he would have been the number he had more batter's face than than anybody on on either of your teams he had more batter's face than everybody on your team jeff he actually single-handedly beat you as well my yeah i i'm

only good at major league middle relievers i'm not good at minor league free agents uh although i guess it turns out that richard rodriguez turned into a major league middle reliever but now he's going to be like a closer probably. And Wade LeBlanc signed a contract extension with a baseball team. So, yeah. Now, Ben, to your credit, Ronnie Rodriguez, at least at present, looks like the Tigers' terrible opening day shortstop for next year. I don't know what they're going to do about that because they lost Jose Iglesias. But you saw something there.

And he had a good season in the minors. And, you know, Sam, you hit on Rafael Ortega, who I think was on all of our lists because of, you know, the situation he was in. And the Marlins, who I'll remind you now, they're in the same situation now because no one is good again in the outfield. So something to keep an eye on. It would not be a bad idea to maybe draft Rafael Ortega again. Well, I think I won the draft because I got Williamsiams estadio yeah so there's that all right well yes and that was a sixth round pick too strangely yeah that's right well hopefully we will in fact all of our best players well i guess you got more out of ronnie rodriguez but let's be honest

williams estadio was your best pick yes and uh wade leblanc was my best pick and casey lawrence was jeff's best pick All sixth rounders Strange Alright so in a few months hopefully we will do it again Wait have you done the cumulative Have you done the cumulative though Because it was getting close I think I probably have taken the multi-year lead

I have not looked at that I don't know thanks to John Chenier Who despite working in the Mariners front office And doing important baseball work Still updates our Google Doc of effectively wild competitions and drafts. But I don't think we have a cumulative sheet on there, so we'd have to do the math, which maybe you can do. But we wanted to talk to you today also because we wanted to establish the defining memory of 2018. Now that the season is over, you wrote about a year ago, you tried to find the single memory that defines each baseball season since 1903. And you put some of the recent seasons in a separate section,

because as you said, we need historical perspective to actually know what is going to define a season. But last year, you took a stab at it and you speculated that the defining memory of 2017 would be that Jose Altuve and Aaron Judge, the shortest and tallest players, were also the two best players or top MVP contenders. Do you still think that that's true? Does that hold up? MVP contenders. Do you still think that that's true? Does that hold up? Just one

last. I... Wade LeBlanc beat both of your teams combined and my Wade LeBlanc-less team very nearly beat both of your teams combined very nearly. So, just... I'm going to interrupt also because I have something I want to say. First of all,

playing in the Venezuelan Winter League right now is Delman Young. He's still around. Delman Young is there. But anyway, Williams Estadio, he's got 58 at-bats, so you know he's got basically 58 plate appearances. And he's batting.379 with a.446 on base. He's slugging.483. He has four walks, and he has struck out not even one time. Williams Estadio still strikeout-less with more than 60 plate appearances in the Winter League,

and I'm sorting, and the most at-bats for any other player in the league with zero strikeouts is 13 by Gabriel Bracamonte. So William Zestadillo is killing it, as one would expect. How's Delman doing? Delman's doing okay. Delman currently is batting 306 and he's hit five dingers, but he's got two walks and 16 strikeouts. So that's not

for anyone. Hey, is that Jesus Montero? I'll be goddamned. You know, I wrote a piece over the summer about the Delman Young trade tree and how it had gotten extended by the Chris Archer deal and how the raise that ended up getting as much value out of Delman Young trade returns as they would have hoped in their wildest dreams to have gotten from Delman Young. And I got a tweet from somebody. I forget exactly what it said, but it was along the lines of, hey, man, I know Delman personally. He dug this story story but didn't feel

like it had to be so negative or something like that i uh i actually chose not to believe that was real yeah uh all right well remember that thing i said three minutes ago no actually i don't answer that one too aaron judge jose altuve do you still think that's the defining image or memory of last season oh i'm i'm looking at i'm looking at the other things that i said could be and uh yeah i i uh no i actually don't i now think that i haven't thought of that since then what's's that? It's not something I've thought of since then. Well, it's the photo. It was cool at the time.

I think I specifically said that the photo of them at second base together will last forever, live forever. And that's why it will be remembered 60 years from now. now but however and and part of the that depends on them both being historically significant figures but hope but maybe ideally not quite ever being as good as they were last year and i think that both of those things continue to look promising i think they both were good enough this year that they will be probably you know both on kind of hall of Fame tracks, but neither one was as good as they were in that, what is so far the best season for each. But I think that I would now reconsider and say that it will be remembered

as the year of the home run. And I think I said that if the home runs go back down, then it'll be the year of the juiced ball. If they continue going up, that'll just be considered, or if they stay the same, that'll just be part of the mush of the juiced ball. If they continue going up, that'll just be considered, or if they stay the same, that'll just be part of the mush of the home run era. But I think that considering that it hit a peak and doesn't seem likely to come back,

I think it'll be the juiced ball year. Especially because we know, maybe the fact that we know that the ball is different now, which at the time we were just speculating about and had a lot of evidence for, but now has been admitted. I don't know whether that makes it more or less likely to be identified. If we were just all doing a conspiracy theory and still wondering why it happened, maybe we would think about it even more. I don't know. But we now know that there was

something different. But I agree that that's what it is now. We now know that there was something different, but I agree that that's what it is now. Does it excite you that in 50 years, people will still be talking about a thing that you were perhaps the leading reporter on that like your, your, you will be the most significant contemporary source of a baseball story that will still be talked about in a half century. Do you think there's going to be a 50 years from now? Well, I guess that would be nice. I don't know. I think Rob Arthur probably did a better job of that than I did,

but that'd be cool, I guess. I like when people read things that I wrote. You co-bylined things with Rob Arthur. Yes, that is true. So 2018, what do we think? What are you doing here? You're using an entire potential podcast topic. It's the off-season, Ben.

You've made a bad call here. Well, and I'm going to write about it too. And I haven't written about it yet, but I have been asked to write about it for a specific date. And so I can tell you with honesty that I have not thought through all the possibilities yet. And I can also tell you with honesty that I have not thought through all the possibilities yet. And I can also tell you with honesty that I think the answer is probably pretty obvious at this point. But I'll keep thinking about it.

But, I mean, don't you think that it's, I mean, it's got to be Otani, right? How do you research, like when you you're brainstorming you already wrote this article once you know thankfully when when we're writing most articles the research is easy you go to baseball reference or some other fan graphs or whatever and you maybe you search twitter and you figure out exactly everything you need to know so you don't have to have the good for memory but like how do you how do you do the research for like moments or potentially long-standing images it sounds like there's a very high risk of leaving something out and looking stupid and i can't imagine anything worse well besides like your article on your article from last year you thanked patrick

dubuque matt trubud rj anderson zachary levine meg raleigh and craig goldstein for consultation so i'm guessing the research was G chatting people and saying, what do you remember about this year? You're just those were two different, two different articles, articles about this topic, three of them for each. But yeah, actually, no, that's a good question, Jeff, because last year, the origin of this entire thing was that I don't know if you remember this, but when the Yankees eliminated the Indians in the league division series, Gary Sanchez, for some reason, dropped the ball, the final strike, and then he picked it up and then he put it in his pocket and ran out and celebrated. But he dropped, I mean, it just popped out of his mitt. And the batter who was maybe Austin Jackson, I think it was, didn't run.

He didn't do anything. He just sort of walked back to the dugout. And as everybody's running in to mob the pitcher on the mound, Todd Frazier was sort of pointing at first for Gary Sanchez to throw the ball to first, but he instead had put the ball in his pocket. And I remember not noticing that immediately, but then someone pointing it out pretty quickly after and then thinking, oh, wow, that seems like the sort of thing that you might not be surprised if in 80 years, that's still in baseball books as like some enormous gaffe. But that's not going to happen. Like we mostly just didn't really care.

And it's been forgotten. So then i started thinking about writing an article about that play but not wanting to do it that night and so then i thought oh maybe i could write this article in december and once some time has passed and then i could write about it as like a historic whether history will remember austin jackson for this so that was what i was going to write about and then i so that became the question of what gets remembered and so i thought well what does get remembered and so then i got a list and i put every year from 1900 to 2000 and wrote what's the first thing i could think of for each year and i filled out like 70 of those years pretty easily and then i thought i should now i have enough that i can make

this like a fake data thing where i could be like 18 rx or whatever which i didn't end up doing but i thought that so then i had to fill out the other 30 and so then i started asking a couple of people to help me fill out the other 30 what came to mind and then i had this great list that was just going to be the data for an article about whether Austin Jackson would be remembered. And I thought, man, I put a lot of work into this list. So I wrote an article about it instead. And then from there, I went back to the Austin Jackson article.

But now I had categories. And so I could just run down the categories and answer each of those, which are much simpler questions, right? Because once you have the category, you don't have to think about what's going to be the most memorable thing in baseball. You think, what is the most incredible personal achievement that a player did this year? Because those are often remembered. And does it seem like the sort of thing that we'll remember five or 50 or 100 years from now? And so then now you have an organizing framework, and then it's very easy. But that i still g chat a few people so i want to i want to ask so uh when austin jason

struck out it was five to two yankees in the bottom of the ninth and there was a runner on second base so even no matter what cassandras puts the ball in his pocket no matter what like the game was not close it was the that at bat began with a 98 yankees win probability yeah now imagine let's say it's three to two yankees win probability yeah now imagine let's say it's three to two yankees and like there was a runner on third or something you know just any any sort of higher leverage circumstance do you think that that moment would then be remembered as a gaffe had the game been a lot closer i'm not sure i think that there's a decent chance that everybody kind of would have covered for everybody else. And

Jackson would have said like, oh, well, he would have tagged me out. And Sanchez would have said, yeah, I mean, I saw that he'd already turned to the dugout. And the umpire would have said, he'd already turned to the dugout, so he would have been out. But yes, I think there's a possibility that it would have. I thought that even with a 5-2 game, I'm going to just read what I wrote so that I remember what I wrote and so that then I can make this case. All right. So if Jackson, and this is in the 5-2 world, this is not the 3-2 world, but if it's a 3-2

world, then just multiply the possibility that this catches on by like eight. Okay. So if Jackson had started running, would Sanchez have noticed in time to throw him out? If not, would the plate umpire have allowed it? Or would he have declared that the play was already over? If he allowed it, would the Indians have completed a comeback against aroldis chapman if they had would the indians have snapped their long world series drought if they had would this have gone down along with mickey owens disastrous drop third strike in the 1941 world series as an

obit leading blunder on sanchez part maybe the answer is no to all or any of those questions but the point is this is exactly the sort of play that doesn't seem that big in the moment. It was barely noticed anywhere. It wasn't mentioned on the broadcast. It only got a short write-up by Indians beat writer Paul Hoynes, but has the potential to pick up intrigue decades later when the principal actors get old and forgetful and the fundamental mysteries of the play become unsolvable. That's especially true if Cleveland's World Series drought stretches past a century. The Billy Goat wasn't a big thing in Chicago until decades afterward. So to answer your question, I don't think it would have been a huge story that month or that year, but it increases the chances that over time it becomes part of the legend,

and some of the details start to kind of get smushed together so that everything seems a little bit closer and a little more uncertain. I think that the next day, like I said, I think they all would have covered for each other. But I think that as long as they're writing, you know, baseball books for kids, there's room for stories like these to become kind of big myths. I think it's Otani too. I haven't thought a ton about it either. I haven't chit-chatted anyone, but I do think it is Otani. And I guess it, I don't know whether it depends on how his career goes from here. If he were to

never come back from surgery, well, again, that could be part of the legend. We saw him for 50 innings and 300 plate appearances, and then we never saw him again. Or if he comes back and is a superstar and keeps doing it, then this will be the first time he did it and showed that it could be done. So I think so, too. And it's also not really emblematic of other things in that there aren't a lot of other two-way players, but there might be. Maybe there will be a few more because this happened. And also it's an era when there are more multi-position players in the majors and the minors, not two-way guys, but guys who play lots of positions. So it's sort of of its moment in that sense. And otherwise, I just don't know what else it would be right now unless it's like bullpenning or something,

but that's just such a long ongoing process that I don't know that anyone will remember this year. I mean, there's the opener, but I hope that the opener is not the most memorable thing about 2018 because that would be sort of sad. Well, I don't think that you should make any other possibilities that a writer might offer seem not worth writing about, though. I wish that you would stop talking because then we could do this on another day. Yeah, exactly. I wish that you edit the last 40 seconds out this was the plan we were always going to do this but then we talked about other things along a long time to rob nyer for like 45 minutes that's it do you remember how hard it is to come up with things to talk about

in the off season yeah you remember everything else if you write this article on december 27th or whatever then we will talk to you about it then. Yeah, well, I'm going to. Yeah, what's your date? I think it, well, last year, so last year it ran at the end of the year. And this year I wanted to write it right now, but I didn't. And so I think it's going to be the end of the year. Okay.

Well, there is occasionally an off-season entry in your past years like you know a rod signing his giant contract was one or i guess homer at the bat that was a february thing but an off-season thing so could still happen maybe we haven't seen the biggest story of 2018 yet yeah yeah i had some other i had some other things I was thinking about that could fit and I haven't really thought about it. Um, but I think there will be plenty to talk about. Rotisserie baseball being invented. That must've been an off season thing, right? I don't know. Anyway. All right. So, uh, we've got Rob Nyer. I was hoping that by the time we finished talking, there would be some Clayton Kershaw resolution that we could acknowledge because it's now past his, uh, 4 PM Eastern deadline to figure out what's going on there.

But, Jeff, you're going to probably go right about it now, whatever happened. If something happened, it sounds like there's probably like a one-year extension or something. Let's tell you. Here's what's probably going to happen. It's going to be four years and $100 million, or it's going to be three years and like $80 million. And that'll be it. There'll be a slightly lower base salary for the next two years. And then there'll be another year guarantee.

And that's everything. And then we will all say, well, maybe the Dodgers are a little uncomfortable spending that much money, but this is Clayton Kershaw and he's still good. That's the essence. So I'm going to turn that into 1,000 words. No more, no less.

Actually, probably not exactly 1,000 words. Don't relate to that. Actually, the terms just did come out. So they agreed to a three-year, $93 million contract, no bonuses, no opt-outs, nothing. So it's basically just one additional year at $28 million guaranteed, which takes him through his age 33 season. Then he can hit free agency again. Maybe he'll be throwing well

and harder again by then we'll see anyway very predictable and acceptable outcome for all sides obviously look clayton kershaw's still good and i don't want to lament a world we don't exist in but imagine if clayton kershaw had like a peak healthy kershaw season this year because then he would clearly opt out and i know there was at least one team out there that was thinking about planning. This is a stretch. But there was at least one team, a fun team out there, that was considering the idea of just throwing an entire nation's worth of money at free agent Clayton Kershaw

if he hit the market. And now that's just not... Even if Kershaw didn't agree with the Dodgers, it just wouldn't happen because his stock is lower than than it was but we are missing out on what would have been just like a fascinating sweepstakes of uh of prime kershaw in the market so we don't get to see that but we do get uh could have been the defining memory of 2018 it sure could have been or maybe it would have been the defining memory of 2019 depending on when it happened yeah that's true i don't think so i don't think it would have been i don memory of 2019, depending on when it happened. Yeah, that's true. I don't think so. I don't think it would have been.

I don't see any scenario. You are the ultimate arbiter of this. I'm just going to cut that discussion off. Okay. All right. So we will take a quick break and we will be right back with Rob Neier. And maybe we'll reconvene in late December or something to talk about what the defining memory was and also do another minor league free agent draft. We'll see if there's another way to bonk out there.

We'll be right back. You and I both know there's only one way. When I write the book about my love, it'll be a pop publication. Tougher than talk when I get down on the pages. All I missed, it was sealed to the top of the West Coast League and also author of the new baseball book, Powerball, Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game, Rob Nyer. Rob, welcome back. It's fantastic to be here, again.

Yeah. And last time we talked to you, we teased that you would have a book out. You now have that book out. We've been slow in getting to you because the playoffs interfered. But here we are. We've read the book and enjoyed the book. And I'm sure you've answered this in other places. But I was wondering, as I was reading about the process of both picking this game and sort of weaving the various topics that you touched on, which is almost everything that you conceivably could have touched on at any point. There were many times during this game that you were documenting a September game last year between the Astros and the A's where someone would come up and you would use it as a launching point into something. And I would think, oh, that worked out well that he could talk about this

thing then. But I'm sure it wasn't quite as effortless as that, and that there was some planning involved in how you were going to organize this thing. It wasn't quite that effortless, but it is true that what I think anyone would find over the course of a game is there are multiple opportunities to discuss most of these things. For example, if you want to talk about infield shifting, it happens so often now that there were probably a dozen times when it would have been perfectly natural to write about it. So for the most part, that was fairly easy. I would, and I was also, I would often be prompted by something that one of the broadcasters would say that would sort of remind me okay this is the this is the time i should talk about this

and i think my i thought that i would probably might drop the the broadcaster's actual commentary into the narrative probably more often than i wound up doing but but they're in there and what i did before even choosing the game was make a list of, I don't know, probably 20, 25 things that I knew I wanted to write about in a book like this. And then we chose the game. Then I watched the game many times and listened to the various audio feeds and another dozen or so things popped up that I also wanted to talk about. And I got to most of them. I think there were a couple of things that I wound up not finishing. And so they got left out of the book. And those are, it's funny when you, as you know,

when you write a book, if you're like probably most writers, you tend to focus on the mistakes you made or the errors that got through or the things you wanted to say but didn't. So I didn't write a single thing about the modern state of baseball managing. And I wrote something. I just didn't wind up using it. I tend to think about the mistakes that Ben made. Well, I haven't had a co-author in too long. That's my problem.

So wait. So how did you choose the game? And I don't know if this is interesting to other people. And I don't know if this is even something that you feel like it's better if we don't know the answer to this. But just as a person who has also tried to come up with content, I'm curious to know how you came up with it, when you came up with this game, why you came up with this game. And again, you might think that all makes the story worse to read if you go into that. And

so you can tell me that you're not going to answer it, but I'm curious. I'm happy to tell you anything, Sam. I doubt if there's any question you could ask me that I wouldn't want to answer. Now, some maybe not in this format, but I'll tell you anything. So very quickly, the project sort of just fell into my lap. And I literally thought that I was finished as a writer of books. I had a couple of ideas that I was excited about, that my agent seemed excited about. And both of them just didn't make it. Pitched to any number of editors and just couldn't figure out a way to make those book ideas work. I'd given up. I literally sent my agent a note saying, I appreciate all your efforts, but I just don't think it's going to happen.

And I think it was within a week of me mailing him that note that I got the word. I think I've said this publicly someplace, so I wasn't sure if it was okay, but I think it is. Jonah Carey, who we all know and love, he got in touch with me and said that an editor had talked to him about a book, and Jonah, for whatever reasons, didn't want to do it or couldn't do it, but Jonah thought I would be good for it, want to do it or couldn't do it. But Jonah thought I would be good for it. And he thought the editor might agree. And so we hopped on the phone with the editor and it was, we basically had a great conversation. He said, send me a list of the things that you would want to write about. I sent him the list. We got on the phone again. And we had a, the deal was completely finished from beginning to end

in probably two weeks which is got to be close to a record for something like this it just doesn't happen that way usually there's this long drawn out process because you're pitching the book and negotiating and in this case you know when editor comes to you it simplifies things quite a bit so my editor helped pick the game it was sort of one of those life lessons you think you'll you go into it thinking well I want to write about these things it'll be easy to find a game where all these things happened where there's an entree for each one of these each one of these items on my list and I started poking around and realized wow maybe if I hired someone to write some sort of program I could find it but I'm just

not having any luck here you know this game has, but it doesn't have that. This other game has that, but it doesn't have this. And so I sort of, I sent a note to my editor and said, I just, I'm sort of not sure what to do here. And he just sort of crushed it and went looking for the right teams with the right win expectancy graph. And I think he wound up sending me three or four possibilities. And I just, this is the game that I chose. It was, we really wanted the two interesting teams front office wise. And with the A's and the Astros, obviously you have that.

The Dodgers would have been fun to write about. The Rays would have been fun to write about. But of course, Jonah's already written about the Rays. And so I think the A's and the Astros, the only, ultimately the only, for me, downside of the teams we chose was that as interesting as the Astros are, they won the World Series, which most people would think, great. But there were like four Astros books that came out even before mine did. And mine came out really fast for this sort of thing. So I'm not sure if that wound up being a great thing, but it was fun to write about them.

So I really can't complain. I thought it worked out pretty well. Yeah. And I mean, the theme of the book is certainly much larger than, at least the theme as I read it, is much larger than the teams involved or the game involved. And I sort of found myself reading each digression through the lens of like how your mood as a baseball fan and observer is sort of like moving up and down with what you see in the field and with the changes in the field. And so that kind of brings, I mean, to me, the

end of the book, you get into this part where you're sort of kind of diagnosing what's good and ill about the game. And I think that over the last, I'm just going to talk for a little while, okay? Over the last, I don't know, like 15, 20 years, it's been the norm for online baseball writers to kind of mock the baseball is dying columns that newspaper writers sometimes write and to point out that people have been saying baseball is sick or dying for, you know, 100 years and have been making many of the or dying for, you know, 100 years and have been making many of the same diagnoses throughout that time. And ultimately, though, you also acknowledge that some of these complaints have been repeated many, many, many, many times.

And yet you conclude that baseball is basically sick. Not sick like sick, but, you know, ill. basically sick, not sick, like sick, but you know, ill. And I'm curious to know how you kind of got to where you felt confident in embracing that position, instead of feeling like maybe you're falling for the same, it was better in my day fallacies that baseball fans have been falling for forever. Well, first of all, all of those tendencies that you mentioned, I have observed too. I think that one of the things that mockery doesn't allow for, and as a longtime practitioner of mockery, I think I can speak with some authority about this. What it doesn't allow for is nuance. And today's generation of baseball writers,

and when I say generation, I mean you guys, basically. And essentially anybody who's younger than me or significantly younger, which you are. I think that your generation is smarter than my generation was by a lot. And my generation was smarter than the one before that, all the way back to whenever. I'm not sure that each generation becomes magnificently wiser than the previous generation. Smarter, yes. Wiser, I'm not sure. And for me, one of the hallmarks of wisdom is the ability to see

both sides of things, to see nuance in arguments. And I mean, that's, I think that's one of the things that I value the most in analysis or writing, whatever it is, commentary, is the ability to see more than just one side of it. So for example, there's a nuanced argument being made that baseball in many ways is greater than it's ever been. And I would agree with that. Certainly the players are more talented. I think people haven't disagreed with that even, but I think they're more talented than they've ever been. They're more diverse, the player population than it's ever been, which I think is fantastic. The ballparks probably are better than they've ever been, at least better than they've been in a long, long time. Our access to the games is, look, I worship my iPhone in the summertime because I can listen to

every single game on my phone. It's incredible. And so I think it's, I think one can recognize all those things and appreciate them and love the game as it's played today, while also acknowledging, or at least understanding the argument that it could be even greater. Why would we not want the greatest possible baseball world? Should we really be satisfied with whatever we're given? And that's sort of the message that I hear a lot of the time. It's like, all the players, especially, seem to think that the game shouldn't be changed. It's great. Why would we do anything? And I just, I don't see the world that way. And I don't have a great deal of patience for people who do. And I see, what I see a lot in

current baseball writing or analysis is this sort of, this notion that if you criticize anything, you're saying the game isn't great or isn't worth paying attention to and i think there's a happy medium between that and john smalls so how do you if you if you determine that babes baseball in the modern era is maybe lacking in terms of aesthetics or any number of things that you've you've discussed how do you go from there to determine sort of a consensus on what baseball ought to be? How interventionalist would you want, say, the commissioner to be?

And how do you settle on a target for this is how long we want the game to go, this is how long we want starters to go, this is the pace that we want, these are the home runs that we want. How do you get there? Because we don't really get to live these counterfactuals. We don't. You're absolutely right. And it really is, it's almost, I never really thought about this in depth before. So I'm going to sort of formulate this as I go along. But it's sort of like a lot of more rational political discussions. Not the ugly stuff that we've become so used to, but when you are setting, for example, tax rates, when reasonable people are setting tax rates, which has happened a few times over the course of our history anyway, when you sit down, nobody knows if a 17% marginal rate is better than a 15% marginal rate. People have ideas and they get together and they try to figure out what makes the most sense.

They should realize that they might well be wrong. And I think that you just wind up getting what you can get. So in the case of baseball, for example, if the parties were ever to sit down and say, this isn't ideal, that's what has to happen first. And then you can sort of just have some discussions. Well, yes, we want the game to be 5% quicker. We want there to be 5% less time between pitches. Okay, that seems like a good baseline.

Let's start there. And then, okay, how does that happen? We have to do A, B, and C. Well, we can't do A, but we can do B and C. Well, yeah, but I can't do C. Okay, we agree on B. Now can we do maybe a little bit of A and a little bit of C and everybody's happy? So I think that would be a massive project just to come to some consensus um and all everybody would have to be involved especially the players and the owners obviously but also all the tv people would have to be involved a part of that conversation as well i don't think you can just say we want to get every we want to be like 1983 we want to have the same game time the same number of triples the same number of steals i think you same number of steals. I think you

probably start with some very rough goals, like we want more triples, we want more stolen bases, we want slightly quicker games. And then you kind of try to figure out, well, what we do to get those things? And maybe you're just trying to make a little progress, just change by 5% the other direction. I don't know there's a good answer for any of these questions. But the first step is for people to acknowledge that something must or should or could be done. Right now, they haven't even gotten that far. How realistic do you sort of feel like that is? At this point, do you see any way that those consensus form? Yes. You do?

I do. I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. I mean, we'll see small things happen, of course, every year. That's sort of the way things are going now. Every year, there are some small changes. I don't see any significant changes, any game changers in the short term. But I do think that in the long term, there is a chance that the TV people will come in and say, this is really isn't working for us. Your product isn't something that we can sell, at least not that we can sell for the price you want.

For the price you want, for the price perhaps you've been accustomed to, we have to actually make some substantive changes. And I think that if the TV people were to come and say that, I think then you'd get some players on board because the players don't want pay cuts, which some of them have already had. But I think I leaned on Ben's research in the book. The players, at least as of a year or two ago, the players' share of overall revenues were hovering roughly around 50%. I think as long as that's happening, the players don't have a great deal to complain about. The players don't have a great deal to complain about. But if the revenues actually drop or if there seems to be a significant drag on the revenues because of television, then I can see people coming to the table with some with some some, you know, at least some willingness to discuss things, lowering the mound by two inches.

To me, that isn't a revolutionary idea, but for baseball players, right now, it would be a complete non-starter. And as I think Sam was alluding to earlier, the main character of the book really is baseball, the sport, and everything associated with it, and you even capitalize it in the book, like a proper name, baseball. And so even though you're writing about the A's and the Astros and talking to many of the players involved in this game, they're sort of supporting actors in this play that you're charting here. And one of the things that makes a character interesting is growth and change and development. And that's probably the thing you spend the most time on in this book is here's how this is different from what it was back then. And I bet if you isolated the number one thing that the four of us have spent the most time writing about in the last several years, it's probably that. It's probably

here's how things are different from how they used to be. Here's the evolution. And I wonder if you could, you know, in some cases you're lamenting the changes, in some cases you're celebrating them, in some cases you're just noting or observing them. But if we could freeze baseball in its ideal form, if we could determine what the most pleasing brand of baseball is to the most people possible, and not even just a survey, I'm talking if we somehow knew what was in everyone's minds and what they responded to most about baseball, and then we said, this is what baseball will look like. And every year, if it changes, we will make some slight tweak to bring it back into line with this ideal version of baseball.

Would you prefer that? Would you sign up for that? Or do you think that the change is what makes it interesting, even if the change is not always a positive, seemingly? I think that, well, you guys ask some really amazing questions it's usually i have everything programmed in already but uh i i don't i i think that most the great majority of fans don't have the same sense of detachment that maybe we do where we i don't know about you guys but i sort of everything that happens even at the moment, on some level, I'm placing it into historical context. So it's automatically interesting to me.

And that's a different perspective, I think, than most fans have. I think that most fans don't take any particular interest in thinking, oh, wow, look at how this has changed since 10 years ago. I just don't really think that's part of the mindset. I think that if you look at what the other sports do, I can't speak to hockey, unfortunately. I've only barely follow up. I know that in the NBA and in the NFL, the rules have been, for decades, they've been liberalized to create a more, at least theoretically, exciting offense-oriented game. And that's done because it seems that's what fans want to watch. I don't think fans take a great deal of interest in knowing how we got from the

NBA and the guys hacking each other constantly in the 1980s to now. I could be wrong about that. I think that for the great majority of fans, if you could somehow come up with that sort of platonic ideal of what baseball should look like, and I have one of those in my head, of course, I think that most fans would be on board with that and they would continue to be on board with it.

And I think I would too. I mean, i would kind of miss the dynamic of the changes that i get to write about and talk about on the other hand most of my lived experience as a baseball fan for seven months every year is the the immersion into the actual games themselves. So I think that, yes, I would lament the loss of that rise and fall of all these trend lines and numbers and things. But I think that would be more than compensated by this beautiful game I got to watch every day. I think it's pretty clear how you would answer this question. But just out of curiosity, you see whenever Commissioner Manfred says something about something you'd like to see changed in the game or he makes some sort of proposal, you'll see a lot of especially, not just fan tweets, but like

player tweets, just implying or explicitly saying our commissioner doesn't like baseball. He's not a fan of baseball. And of course, when Ben and I talk, and I'm sure when Ben and Sam talked as well, there's more of an open mindedness to the, I guess, to use your word, the liberalism of the rule changes and the being an interventionalist. So where do you come down on baseball's current commissioner seemingly making so many, some conservative, but some rather aggressive proposals with certain trends in the game in mind well i would say and i i i'm not as much a fan of the commissioner as i was when he started he obviously looked a lot better than bud selig in many ways and he also seemed to have an open mind and i still do appreciate that uh i don't think he's – we do have a tendency to assign everything that happens in Major League Baseball to the commissioner. But, of course, he's basically an employee, just as Bud Selig was an employee, and often a spokesperson for whatever the owners really want to do. person for whatever the owners really want to do. I do appreciate the fact that Manford seems to have an open mind about things, and I appreciate some of the changes. He seems amenable to

speeding up the time between pitches, which I think is inarguably a good idea if you can do it without causing some massive disruption to pitchers' health. Am I a huge fan of the automatic intentional walk? Well, no. How could you be a huge fan of that? It's impossible. But it's also— I named my kid automatic intentional walk. But I also think that the willingness to do that

suggests an open-mindedness that I appreciate. He does say a lot of things that don't make any sense to me. When he laments the infield shift, he attributes effects that aren't there, which is frustrating to me. I just want a commissioner who is honest and knowledgeable. Bud Selig often seemed like neither of those things. Manfred is far better, but he still says some things where you just sort of shake your head and say, you know, you have this incredible staff. How do you not know these things? I don't think he's being dishonest. I think he just isn't really paying close enough attention.

We all write about these things that make baseball a little better or a little worse, or maybe even a lot better or a lot worse for us. But I've kind of have lately had this hypothesis that mostly what people want out of baseball is a combination of two things. They want to know the outcome of a sporting event, and they want that outcome to, they kind of care about that outcome because they think everybody else is caring about that outcome. There's sort of a network effect the same way that like, for instance, I don't follow football. But if you know, I might watch the championship game because, you know, it feels like you're a part of something. It feels like you're a part of a cultural thing that everybody is sharing. And that has got me wondering whether baseball might actually be at risk of collapse.

Like for the most part, it's still very profitable. It still makes a lot of money. And it's very easy then to say that we're all too nervous about this thing that's clicking along just fine, $9 billion industry, so on and so forth. But if you kind of lost that feeling that the culture cares about baseball, then it seems to me that you could see a real exodus of casual fans who just don't turn on the thing that nobody is talking about anymore. And that it might be just, you know, it might just be that baseball is a thing from previous

generations that very quickly in America, at least, becomes irrelevant because it doesn't have the mass of numbers behind it. Do you feel like that's at all a possibility? Do you think that there's a collapse possibility that baseball might actually not survive this in any real significant form a couple decades from now? Well, first of all, I always say that predicting what's going to happen in 20 years is almost impossible, especially now. Everything seems to be changing faster than it used to.

I would be very surprised if baseball wasn't still financially quite healthy 10 years from now. 20 years is just a little far out for me to think about. But what baseball has going for it in terms of staying relevant is the immense local appeal. Obviously, I's big. You know, I have this thing that I've been trying to work through in my head for a while now about superstars and who's a superstar and whether or not we'll ever have one again, because I don't think we have any now. If Mike Trout can't be a superstar, then it's going to be tough for anybody

else, right? But Mike Trout is, I suspect, a superstar in Orange County. And there are lots of guys like that who are big stars where they are. Jose Altuve, I'm sure, is beloved in Houston. And I don't really see that going away. And a lot of that, I think, is because of the nature of the game itself, the day-to-day aspect of it, where people sort of get sucked in. So even if you're not a huge fan, it's in the background. People are talking about it. You see people wearing the t-shirts and the caps around town. So I think nationally, it's going to continue to become less important, less a, quote, national pastime. But I think locally, as long as teams don't give up more than they have been, and that's an quote national pastime. But I think locally, as long as teams don't give up more

than they have been, and that's an issue that I think baseball will address, I don't think it's any danger on the local side. So I wanted to ask you about your use of stats in the book. It's not a stat book by any stretch. Not that that would scare away anyone who's listening to this podcast, I don't think. But even though it's very conversational and it's, hey, we're at the ballpark and we're just chatting, probably I would say there's some sort of stat on the majority of pages. even as recently as a decade ago, or say when you were working on your previous books, or let alone the books that were sort of the spiritual predecessors of this one, Nine Innings and A Day in the Bleachers. So I wanted to ask when you feel a stat is necessary or when it helps and when it hinders, because you talked about this in the book, about how something like exit velocity is often just dropped into broadcast without any context and it's just sort of cited because we can and it's there and I was

thinking of this yesterday when I was writing something in my book about at the Astros reliever Ryan Presley and I was talking about how Presley is rare among relievers in that he throws a curve ball and a slider very often whereas usually most relievers throw one he throws a curveball and a slider very often, whereas usually most relievers throw one. And I could have just said that and left it there. And in the past, I probably would have. But because we have all this data, suddenly I was exporting leaderboards and I was opening up a spreadsheet and determining that, you know, there were 250 pitchers last year who threw 30 innings in relief. And Ryan Presley is the only one who threw a curveball and a slider at least a quarter of the time. And I thought that was a fun stat or a satisfying stat,

and so I stuck it in there. But I don't know whether that's a good thing or not. I don't know whether most readers would just prefer that I said, hey, he throws a curveball and a slider. It's kind of weird that he does that, and they would take my word for it whereas i feel this need to back it up and also express it as this sort of fun fact so i wonder when you felt that it was a great resource to have some of these stats available and whether at times you worried about whether you were just sort of sticking them in because they're so easily available well ben i did exactly the same thing that you did, except I did it with Danny Coulomb. Yes, that's right.

I looked up probably the same exact pages on Fangraph. So yes, I reflexively do that. It didn't even occur to me to think, does the reader care about this? I probably would sell more books if I did think about those things, but it wouldn't even occur to me. Because my whole, from that exact moment that I started reading my first Bill James book in 1984, I always want people to prove something to me,

which has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years with various people because I don't just accept every statement at face value. Sometimes you just have to do that to get along. And I've gotten better about it. But when I'm writing, I reflexively want to show my work. Yeah. So if you sort of are willing to live with yourself, and I am, I'm not willing to compromise that part of myself, even if it might sell a few more books, then the bit of skill is in making your point, backing it up with facts as with as much brevity as possible. And that's sort of what we have to grapple with. Because obviously, you could go a four-page digression about pitchers throwing two different kinds of breaking balls, and then how come nobody throws,

hardly anybody does sliders and curveballs. And here's this quote from someone saying, if you throw a slider, you won't throw a good curveball, etc., etc. And that's a great discussion. I would read that. But you have to realize that people, most readers do have their limits. So that's probably not this book.

So you attempt sort of a difficult balance here in the book in that you take a pro-union stance. And as you mentioned, I think overwhelmingly baseball writers these days are pro-union and approve of obviously the rights that the players have derived from their representation. But you also try to thread the needle and point out some of the unintended consequences that come of that and maybe have not been positives for the game, namely that because players have so much power now, they can stand in the way of any change that MLB might want to make to pace of play, the things that we've been talking about earlier. So how do you divorce those two things? Is it possible to do that, to not take away the rights that the players have fought so hard to gain and that they deserve and that anyone in most other fields of work take for granted and yet also not i guess give them the power to put their feet down and say well we like taking 30 seconds between

pitches so we're just going to keep doing that well and can i can i i would like to tack on something to that question too which is that you brought up a very interesting point in that on that topic that players now they have, I mean, they're, they're the most of the negotiations, it seems like the issues that they're negotiating over the players have kind of taken the position that these are workplace safety issues that, that right now they, I mean, the money is not quite so controversial as maybe the, the league in some cases, trying to attempt to change the way that players play in a way that players feel is harmful to their health, to their ability to perform at a very high level. And that kind of that does kind of it seems like the with the players frame things that way. I don't feel like I have really any moral position to deny them. I mean, it's hard to say, no, you should definitely be hurting yourself for my enjoyment.

That is not how I feel. Do you think that that position is fair? Is it honest? Is it in good faith? Do you really think the player's health is at risk in things like pace of play questions? Well, sure, but it's a matter of degree. The players would be much healthier if they played three games a week rather than six. That doesn't mean that we should have any sympathy for the union if they suddenly say,

we'd like to play 81-game schedules and continue to be paid the same amount of money or roughly the same. Nobody would think that's reasonable. What the union does is something far more rational and reasonable, which is chip away a little bit here and there. So the schedule will be maybe a week longer this year so we can have an extra four days off. Okay, that makes sense. Why not? But it's like everything else that's happened. It's a little bit here, a little bit there, and then all of a sudden you realize that things have become quite a bit different and you didn't even really notice it was happening. I do think there are workplace safety issues that need to be addressed, no question, But how far does one take that? Why not let a pitcher rest for 30 seconds between every pitch? He will probably be healthier or he will certainly

perform better or most of them will because we know that the longer a pitcher takes between pitches, I believe we know, the harder he can throw. So why wouldn't we let them do that? And actually, that's kind of where we're at now not obviously not every pitcher takes that much time but some do and when you say don't do that they'll say well i need to this is what i need to do to do to be as good as i can be or to be as healthy as i can be and i wouldn't say that the arguments aren't in good faith but you just that has to be balanced against the needs of... And the one argument that I've made through all of this for the last year or two, various places,

probably at Twitter too often, but in the book, certainly, that I've not seen anyone else make, it's the one thing that I feel that I wish... Yeah, it'd be great if somebody said, yeah, Rob's right, they should lower the mound by two inches, whatever. People have said that before. The one argument that I wish people yeah, it'd be great if somebody said, yeah, Rob's right, they should lower the mound by two inches, whatever. People have said that before. The one argument that I wish people would pay the most attention to is the argument that baseball is no longer run for the enjoyment of the fans,

which it was for many decades. People will say it was run for the pleasure of the owners, and to some degree that was true, People will say it was run for the pleasure of the owners, and to some degree that was true. But for the owners, pleasure meant, for the most part, aside from lying to players about their contracts and things, what that meant was making as much money as we can and doing that by appealing to as many fans as possible. And I simply believe that's gone away. Not completely, but to a large degree that's gone away. The fans are an afterthought. And that's where I think that the media could do some good work. Instead of arguing that,

well, why wouldn't we let the players take as much time between pitches as they want? They're the players. They're in a union. Okay, fine. They're in a union. I would rather think about my priorities would not be the owners, certainly not the owners. And it wouldn't be the players except for their health. It would be for minor league players and fans. And you hear very little in the media about either of those populations. I'd ask about the different forms of writing because you have written obviously at length in columns at ESPN for years, then transitioned for the most part, I would say, to a more bloggy, quick reaction format at Fox or SB Nation. And you've done freelancing that has sometimes gone to great length, and you've done books that,

in this case, are very narrative and a long, just single, solid piece of writing, as opposed to previous books that were organized in some way, you know, lists or rankings and pictures and what they threw. Do you find this to be more challenging and more rewarding or either of those things to be able to expound at length like this? Well, no, I wouldn't say that expounding is all that rewarding anymore. I felt like this book needed some of that, especially at the end. That was actually the hardest part of the book for me to write was the afterword where I expounded. For one thing, I didn't really know where to stop. I think the first draft of the afterword was 4,000 or 5,000 words and my editor wanted 1,500 and I wound up getting down to around 3,000. But I've spent decades expounding. And for me, it isn't

all that interesting anymore to tell people what I think or what I believe. I'm not saying it's not worthwhile. I think that some of the things that I wrote, I'm glad that somebody wrote them. And if it had to be me, great. The work that I find most rewarding now, and this has been true for the last three or four years, five years, whenever I started doing more of it, is what I sort of think of as traditional journalism. Going out and finding people and talking to them and asking the right questions or what I hope are the right questions. I did a piece a few years ago about Bill Murray's very short baseball career in the Pacific Northwest. And I had the, that's the most fun I've ever had working on anything. And this book was, the most fun I had working on this book was going to the locker rooms and talking to the A's and to the Astros.

And I also spoke to some players on the phone as well and various other people. But I would love to just talk to people and listen and find out things that I don't already know. To me, I wish I had come to it sooner. I'd be better at it now, but I'm glad I'm getting a chance at this point. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that too. Probably my last question, because you do pepper this with quotes from the players involved in the game. And I try to do that in my writing too. And it's sort of the same impulse, I guess, as the stat thing that we were talking about, where it's showing your work, where if you say something or assert something, well, you want to go ask the

person involved if that was actually what he was doing or thinking. But I also worry about it at times just the same way that I think, well, is this quote adding anything or am I sticking it in there because, hey, I took the time to talk to the guy. And if I stick it in there, it'll look like I did that work. And I can show everyone that I'm a real reporter. And I got quotes. And of course, that's kind of the beat writer, old school game story type thing where you just leave a space for a quote and then you stick in whatever the rote thing that the guy said.

And usually it's nothing that reveals anything to you. But did you find talking to so many of the people involved in this game that you did have your mind changed about certain things or that they said things that you hadn't even thought of because they were there? Oh, sure. It's illuminating. It was incredibly illuminating for me because I think I was able to ask some questions that players aren't typically asked, in large part because this wasn't right after the game. So they were able to be more reflective. And I was typically talking to them in relaxed times before, you know, two hours before a game, for example, or more.

And for the most part, everybody was enthusiastic about talking to me. Maybe it helped that it wasn't the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Cubs, that it was two teams that didn't have a great deal of media attention, at least not when I was in the room. And it was the lesser known players. And it was also some of the stars.

Jose Altuve was great could not have been could not have been nicer and he told me some things that I didn't know about his his development as a player he so for me it really came down to questions like things it comes down to things like you can watch how many times that someone told you, why don't these stupid players just go the other way against the shift, right? And I've thought the same thing. And I write something similar in the book, but it's worth actually talking to players and at least getting their take. Now, as you know, having read it, I'm a little skeptical of their explanations, but it's good to have them.

And I think one of the things that you mentioned beat writers, and I don't want to throw them under a bus or anything, but one of the things that's historically or traditionally been done, I think too often is just throwing quotes in without any context or skepticism. And I didn't, for the most part, that's not what I do. Now, it's different if it's an oral history of Michael Jordan's baseball career. You just want to talk to people and tell their story. You're not analyzing their story. You're just telling it.

But that's not what this book is. This isn't an oral history of this baseball game. That could be fun too. In fact, that's an idea for somebody. I guess it's been done with many famous games, but what about an oral history of a game that is forgotten the next day? That could actually be kind of cool. And to some degree, that's what I was doing when I spoke to these guys is, you know, what was happening, even though I know it was five, six months ago, but they remember things. They remember

what it's like to face a certain pitcher or what they were thinking when they went to the plate. And I think that I might ask a lot of the same questions that anybody would, but the ability to ask it those questions six months later might lead to more interesting answers. All right, that's the market inefficiency. I guess just wait six months until after something happens and then come along and you'll get a good answer. Yes. Just real quick.

This is a very good format for a book. It worked very well for Dan Okrent. It worked very well for you and it will work very well for someone in 25 years who carries the tradition on. Do you have any advice for that author 25 years from now who decides to write a book in this genre? Well, I think that the only advice I would give is some advice that I wasn't able to follow. I just logistically wasn't able to. When Dan wrote his book, he was not only in the ballpark for the game, but he started working on the project three years before the game. So he had done an immense amount of reporting. And the background, the color in his book is just immense compared to mine, because he worked on it for five years.

He worked on it for three years before, not full time, but he was working on it, talking to people. And then I think for two plus years after the game, he was working on it and doing more reporting. So obviously the more time you have, the better. Unfortunately, in my case, we just figured we couldn't take two years. I had six months, basically. The game changes too fast. There's really not that much change between Dan's game in 82 and when the book was published in 85. It was almost exactly the same game. And that just doesn't happen anymore.

But I would love to have had two or three months to do some background work and reporting, but it just wound up not being that book, so I had to write about other things. And you can only fit so many things into one book. I do think that it is a great format. You're right. It's been done. One of my favorite sports books is a book called 48 Minutes,

which is Terry Pluto's take on the NBA. Same format. Celtics game against, I can't remember who they were playing, but maybe the Cavaliers. Yeah, the Cavaliers. So it is a good format, and people will do them again. And you could write a much different book five years from now. That's, it shouldn't be 25 this time.

It should be five at the most. Do you, do you think the game will quit changing? Do you think the pace of change will slow? Are we going to reach a point where the kind of big tech boom has, has steadied and, and there's something more stable about it in the future? Or is the pace of change just going to continue to accelerate? Well, I'm not smart enough to answer that question. Well, I think that maybe the pace won't continue as it has, but it will still be dizzying either way.

And when one of the things that I don't believe I wound up mentioning in the book, but wearables have become gigantic in sports. But major league players have resisted. Well, because they're so big. They're so gigantic. Because they, oh, that too. Right. But the wearables thing hasn't really happened in the major leagues because the players are afraid that the data will be used against them. the players are afraid that the data will be used against them. But we can almost assume that as players reach the majors, having been using these things in high school and college, etc.,

and the minors, they're going to stop worrying about that as much. And it's not clear to me, I'm not an expert at all, what that's going to lead to. But it does seem to be a thing that is, I don't know that wearables will change the game in the same way that the TrackMan technology has, but I do assume that it's going to have a significant effect. And we're just seeing the beginnings of that. Well, now we're encroaching on my book, so I'm ending the interview.

So everyone go get the book. It is called Powerball, Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game Pick it up before the game changes again Although even when it does We will have this document of what it looked like At a moment in time So Rob it is always a pleasure to read you And to talk to you so thanks for coming on

Oh you guys asked the best questions Thanks for having me this was great So that will do it for today and for this week Thanks to Sam Sam. Thanks to Rob. Thanks to Jeff, I guess. Jeff's always here. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already done so. Joel Rudolph, David Rifkin, Brian Renfrew, Ben E., and Sean Hatch. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms.

Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastwithfangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. And we should shine a light on, a light on. And a book of write-ons, write-on, it was write-on. It was right on. And we should shine a light on, a light on.

And I put that right on, right on. It was right on.