Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1294: Signs Language

Episode Date: November 10, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a Carter Capps-like cricket bowler, another Scott Boras nautical analogy, the latest Mariners-Rays trade (this time involving Mike Zunino, Guillermo Heredia, and Mallex Smith), how fans felt about the 2018 season, and a Twitter kerfuffle caused by comments made by Bill James, then (31:19) bring on former major […]

I see the signs every day In your face and in the way that you act It's not that it hurts my pride And now I see the other side of you The side that won't let down, the side that won't let go Hello and welcome to episode 1294 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Dylan Berg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello.

Judy Martinez won two Silver Slugger Awards. Weird time to be alive. But my favorite thing, so we both got a tweet. We both got a tweet earlier today from a Twitter user, and it pointed to an espn article about cricket and the headline is shiva singh's 360 degree delivery falls foul of umpires now uh shiva

singh is a bowler and for anyone who hasn't watched cricket or is unfamiliar with cricket uh the bowler basically the pitcher and a big difference between the bowler and the pitcher aside from bouncing the ball intentionally on purpose is that the bowler will take a running start and then let the ball go yes but shiva singh who bowls for udder pradesh so he's a he's a lefty he's a left arm spinner according to the article and shortly before he released the uh the ball he did a 360 degree spin and the umpire or whatever they are called let's go with umpire declared dead ball you can't do that shiva singh says uh he's done it before in different competitions and everything went fine but in this case everything did not go fine so sort of the the carter caps of this game between bengal and adar pradesh in kalyani on the

outskirts of kolkata the umpire told singh that if he tried it again he would continue to call dead ball yeah i'm sorry this wasn't allowed it pretty clever, and I will link to it so that everyone can watch the video, but I mean, I guess I can see why it wouldn't be allowed, because it does look very deceptive and hard to adjust to. It's like, you know, he does a complete revolution, and then suddenly the ball comes out of this place where I can't imagine it would be easy to pick up the release point or whatever the technical term for a release point in cricket is. And there was a batsman who is quoted in the article, and he has faced Shiva when he has done this. And he says he has uncanny ways of distracting the batsman, but I wasn't phased by it. He has uncanny ways of distracting the batsman, but I wasn't phased by it.

But he now goes on to say, and there's a lot of cricket lingo in here that I almost understand, Shiva is a spinner who is capable of bowling a bouncer because of his strong left shoulder. I don't know what that means. He throws hard, I guess, so he can bounce it and it will get there pretty fast. I don't know if that's how I'm interpreting that. He has a couple of different actions. Sometimes he doesn't lift his non-bowling arm. Sometimes he walks up to the crease like a zombie.

But even when Shiva turned around and bowled, I wasn't aware of the distraction rule. And if he bowled more than once, I would be totally cool to face him. So I guess he's like the Johnny Cueto of cricket, kind of. Yeah, and there's a couple other headlines here from the sidebar. There's India women bank on spin arsenal batting depth, and then a little below that, there is lack of power hitters, a concern for improving Pakistan. So cricket, it's just like baseball, except I guess more women. Yeah, well, maybe we'll do a cricket-themed episode later this offseason. We've done them before.

I think I know who I want to talk to. Yeah, me too. Well, later this episode, we are going to be talking to F.P. Santangelo, former major leaguer for the Expos and Giants and others, and more recently a Nationals broadcaster. We're going to talk to him about a bunch of things, but mainly sign stealing and pitch tipping, which of course was a constant story during the postseason. And we were always

wondering about it. So we wanted to have an expert on, and there's even been some news in that realm this week because at the GM meetings, evidently one of the items on the agenda was MLB thinking about trying to discourage technology-aided sign stealing by cutting off access to the center field camera feed in the club's video room. So there seems to be some desire here to try to curtail sign stealing. And we talked to FP about how all that happens, both the technology-aided version and the time-honored, old-fashioned analog version. So that was fun. Good conversation.

A couple other things, though, that we need to talk about before that. Obviously, we've got to talk about Boris. Because Boris is back, and Boris analogies are back. And even though I know that he only says these wacky things so that we will talk about them and so that he will be quoted and his clients will be discussed, I don't know how that actually helps. It's not like having us talk about Bryce Harper and Manny Machado is calling them to attention of any major league teams. I think they are aware that those two gentlemen are free agents. But Scott Boris has gone back to the well, and I guess that is a water-based analogy in a way.

He has brought back the nautical analogy that he used to such great effect last offseason. Last offseason, Scott Boris compared sweepstakes to the America's Cup, a well-known, maybe the most well-known regatta yep this year talking about bryce harper specifically in response to the yankees saying or at least reports saying that the yankees aren't that interested in bryce harper scott boris said this is not a regatta this is a submarine race a concept which does not exist in any shape or form uh in reality but how many boats does Scott Boris own such that the first thing that is on his mind is a regatta? Like, how much time does Scott Boris spend as an aquatic person? Because, I mean, I know he also, like, boats and volcanoes seem to be, like, Scott Boris's go-to.

I forgot what else he said because I don't read this transcript. I just see the tweets, but it seems like things are nautical to him. I don't know what next offseason is going to be. Like maybe this isn't a regatta, but there are two yachts and they're not necessarily in competition, but I don't know.

They're exploring the seven seas. I don't know what goddamn nonsense Scott Boris is going to talk about, but we are not that far removed from the parallel universe in which it's Scott Boris who is the president of the country, because it's just like we're kind of we're dealing with similar personalities here. It's just one of them. The stakes are a lot lower, I guess. Yeah. So Boris called Bryce Harper a rocket ship of economic performance that is just about to blast off. Bryce Harper, a rocket ship of economic performance that is just about to blast off. But the submarine race, what is he even trying to convey here? I guess the fact that this race,

it's like running silent, running deep, like we don't know who the suitors are, but it's happening under the surface. I mean, we have Navy veterans in our Facebook group who have served on submarines, which I kind of envy. That's like my dream career is serving on a submarine. It's just dark and there's no sunlight and you can just stay up at weird hours. It sounds great. You know you can do that. I could, I guess. So Eric Mulhare, who is a Navy veteran, he says he spent a little over six years of his life underwater serving on five

different submarines over the past few decades. He says, number one, submarines don't race each other. Number two, if they did, it would be super boring even to the participants. And three, I have no idea what any of this has to do with Bryce Harper. I googled submarine race just to see and uh there have been like submersible crafts that have raced as parts of like scientific competitions like let's build a submersible and race them so i guess technically submarine races exist like you wouldn't do it with real submarines it would it would be very complicated from all the submarine media i've consumed over the years which is a lot so i don't know i guess it's supposed to indicate that there's some stealthy dealings going on here right but okay let's let's try to break this down because here the fundamentally scott boris is not as good at, I don't know, spinning a yarn as he thinks that he is, because it is

utter nonsense. But if you take, I think what he's trying to convey is like, okay, so the Yankees say that they're not interested in Bryce Harper, but really, like, there's interest and they're just trying to hide it. But let's think about this. He used submarine race. Now, if submarines were to be racing, let's just grant this, it does not

happen, it is ridiculous, it's ludicrous to suggest that there are submarine races, but let's just take him at his word is is it meant to convey that the submarines aren't aware of one another because that doesn't make any sense submarines would be aware of one another racing yeah because and otherwise just collide you can't just look at the window yeah we know where so we know where submarines are this isn't hunt for red october like the 21st century but But if he means, oh, yeah, all the teams know who's interested in Bryce Harper, but it's concealed from the public.

Well, if there's a submarine race and the winner is in the public interest, as in the case of Bryce Harper signing as a free agent, what good is a race where we don't know where anyone is until the very end? That's not a competition that the public cares about. That's just being informed, by the way, a thing happened a competition that the public cares about. That's just being informed,

by the way, a thing happened, and here's the result of it. They tell you who won at the end, and that's it. Yeah. I guess maybe you're like, I like reading box scores, but I don't like watching baseball, so maybe that's who it's supposed to appeal to or something. Just like, I don't like watching the submarine races. I find them boring. The pace of the race is a little too slow, but I sure do love looking at the results of the submarine races. We have discussed the scenario on this podcast in the past where we just don't know anything that happens over the offseason. And then teams show up to spring training and we find out what moves they made, which I think would be terrible from a covering baseball all winter perspective, but kind of fun when it actually happened in spring training. Plus you'd save yourself a lot of worthless rumors. But that would kind of be a submarine race because you really wouldn't know anything until the finish line.

But in reality, not a submarine race. I saw Hunter Killer a week ago. Great movie, but I'm mentally downgrading it now because there were no submarine races. I don't have anything else to add to this. I don't know. What is Manny Machado going to be? He's got a different agent. I don't know who his agent is, but it's not Boris. Is it? Under what conditions? Submarines aren't that fit. I'm not going to talk about submarines anymore. You want to talk about Jerry DePoto? I guess Jerry DePoto is the other thing we can talk about. Yeah, let's do that. And we did that last time because we were speculating about what Jerry DePoto making trades would look like and before

we even uploaded the episode I think he had made one, his annual or more than annual Rays Mariners trade so you wrote about it. It's Mike Zanino and Heredia going to the Rays for Malik Smith. And this is kind of an interesting trade, I guess, because it's like one guy who was way below his established or expected level of offensive performance last year and one guy who was way above it. And maybe they'll just kind of meet in the middle and then the trade will make sense. Yeah, the Mariners Rays have now made eight trades in the time since Jerry DePoto took over with the Mariners, which what has that been four years or something? So it really has been semi-annual that they've been doing this. But each of the last four Novembers, the Mariners have made like a meaningful trade.

In fact, four years ago, they traded Brad Miller and Logan Morrison to the Rays on November 5th, which is even earlier than the Mike Zanino trade this year. So very clearly, Jerry DePoto likes to be active on the trade market, and he seems to like to be active with the Rays on the trade market. And the Rays, to this point, have had no reason to turn his calls away. So Mike Zanino was a two-year team control player that the Mariners sent to the Rays because the Mariners are, quote, reimagining their roster, which does not mean rebuilding, I guess. So they traded the two-year Mike Zanino. It sounds from my communications, it sounds like they're closest trading the two-year James Paxton. I don't know what the return is going to be for that one, but for Zanino, they traded

Zanino, who's a two-year player, and Guillermo Heredia, a bench player, but four years of control and a prospect for four years of Malik Smith and a prospect this past season Malik Smith was better than Mike Zanino in prior seasons Mike Zanino was better than Malik Smith and so that's basically what this what this comes down to Zanino was a very good defensive catcher who has gotten worse at the plate he swings and misses all of the time but when he doesn't swing and miss he hits the ball at 900 miles Malik Smith hits the ball more often hits the ball not any miles at all the ball doesn't go anywhere off of his bat but he runs really well so i think you look at malik smith and you

can see a center fielder there he's one of the fastest players in baseball and he had a 117 wsu plus last season which basically tied him with george springer which is uh which is funny i believe malik smith actually finished last year with a higher slugging percentage than Mike Zanino even though they could not be more different players in any shape or form yeah so I feel like Malik Smith is one of those guys who he doesn't even make an average rate of contact and he doesn't have power it seems like it's a difficult skill set to succeed with especially because he doesn't seem like he is an elite defender reminds me of like Michael Boren at the plate in a way. Mike Zanino, of course, is a much more hit or miss kind of guy, but I think Zanino is better than his 2018.

I think Smith is worse than his 2018. I kind of lean toward the Rays in this trade, but I do think it's interesting because it's suggestive of what the Mariners are going to try to do because they didn't just trade Zanino for prospects. I don't think they're going to just trade James Paxton for prospects. They're trading for major league players who have a lot of team control left, but players who can help right now. And I think that's what this is going to come down to.

I think the Mariners are going to spend the offseason trying to turn two-year players into four- or five-year players so that they can sort of try to extend this window without getting too much worse. It's not good to trade Mike Zanino because the Mariners don't have a catcher. It's not good to trade James Paxtonino because the mariners don't have a catcher it's not good to trade james paxton because they don't have another really good starter but i think this it's sort of similar to the pirates last year of we're just trying to shift the window while trading really recognizable pieces right now like garrett cole like andrew mccutcheon so more moves will be coming on both sides and this is not the first time that the Rays have acquired a good framing catcher who hasn't hit a lot lately and I'm sure that the next moves they make if they go after a DH type like a Nelson

Cruz or something that's about the most stereotypical Rays sort of signing I can imagine they have a history of older DH types on short-term deals. So anyway, it's kind of easy to envision the parameters of what they might be doing next. But Jerry, busy as always. I do keep thinking Nelson Cruz is one pretty obvious fit in Tampa Bay, but I wonder if they might make the most sense for Josh Donaldson, who we talked about the other day,

because they have a lot of financial flexibility in the extreme short-term because no one on their team costs anything, they will eventually and that could kind of match the josh donaldson window i know you picked him you picked the over on his salary estimate the other day yeah which i think was one year and 20 but that could that could be an interesting fit if the razor looking for a star all right couple more things is there anything interesting to report from your most recent poll the audience piece for Fangraphs? I was kind of intrigued because it was about how excited or how satisfied people were with the 2018 season.

And I feel like the perception is or my perception of the consensus is that it was not a great season just because of some of the lopsidedness and not that memorable postseason and various other factors so what did the fan graphs crowd have to say about the season so at least relative to last year the median team excitement the fan sentiment emotional response positive emotional response rating to this season the median team rating was higher than it was this season before i think the season before was even more top every there were fewer surprises and what really lifted things up this year is that like a's fans braves fans rays fans brewers fans were all extremely pleased even though the rays didn't make the playoffs the a's were barely in the playoffs and the braves were also kind of barely in the playoffs and the Brewers lost in Game 7 of the LCS, which is difficult.

But all of those fans, all of those teams got very high excitement ratings. This is, of course, biased by the Fangraphs audience, so fans are not representative of fans at large. I don't know how Rays fans overall feel about the season that they had, but just relative to expectations, this was a year with a good number of overachievers. But, of course, at the other end, even though the Cubs were in the playoffs for just as long as the A's,

Cubs fans were not so thrilled with the season that they had. And maybe obviously the Orioles had the worst rating. That's not a coincidence. It was bad. The Orioles fans had a much worse experience than even last year's Giants and the Mets fans in 2017. But what was interesting is a team like the Yankees had sort of spread out results. And I think this year's Yankees were polarizing because they won 100 games. They had a very good team.

They not only did they lose to the Red Sox in the first round of the playoffs, they didn't win the division. And I think there's the sense of kind of like a missed opportunity for the team to be better. I don't know. I always say, you're in New York, you should know these things better than me. And then you always say, I'm not really, really well that much connected to like the new york media scene and the frenzy over the yankees but it does i think indicate that the fangraphs audience is not immune to sort of the the bipolar nature of the response to this year's yankees

because the team was great but still overshadowed which i think the yankees are not accustomed to being yeah well i'm always curious about that exercise because I never really know how to judge whether a season was a good season from my sort of impartial perspective. Like if you're primarily interacting with baseball through the lens of one team, then that's a lot easier to determine. If you're just trying to sum up an entire season, that's hard to do because how do you even begin to do that? Do you do it by how good the races were, how good the playoffs were? Were there award chases or milestones or was there some kind of interesting brand of baseball or record set? It's really hard to just encompass one giant season with more than 1,000 players and 30 teams.

It's just kind of baseball every year but there are seasons that stand out in the collective consciousness more than other seasons and i don't know whether 2018 will really be one of them but that's kind of the conversation that we were having with sam recently and may have with sam again i guess i think my favorite takeaway from the exercise was i i every year i generate an expected fan rating based on a team's final record and also the difference between a team's final record and their before the year projected record those are the two driving factors i've observed in my years of doing this project and the team whose rating was the furthest below its

expected rating this year was the seattle mariners who have finished with a very good record and also overachieved their projected record and still everybody was very sad because of the way that the season went so just more proof of how dreadful it was a year in 2018 for the mariners who were ever so close to snapping their playoff drought all right Last banter topic. Shall we briefly venture into the Bill James Twitter kerfuffle? If anyone missed this, Bill James, who has been known to send some divisive tweets from time to time, perhaps not that surprising in that he's always been kind of a contrarian and Twitter is a very unfiltered medium. And so now he just puts his thoughts out there and sometimes those thoughts rub people the wrong way and sometimes for good reason. So this week I think was his most controversial tweet storm. So I'm not going to claim to have read every single Bill James tweet here and I believe he has deleted some of them since. But essentially what happened is he was talking about player payment, and he was making some snide comments about players being

underpaid and people suggesting that millionaires playing Major League Baseball could possibly be underpaid. And then that segued into a conversation about whether the players are really the heart of Major League Baseball or whether they're just a part of baseball. And then he said something that I don't think came out quite the way he intended it to or certainly wasn't interpreted the way he intended it to be, which was that if all the players were replaced by other players, we would just forget about it and move on and not even notice three years down the road. And so there was quite a response to this sequence of tweets. Tony Clark, the Players Association head, he put out a statement condemning this statement by Bill James. Then the Red Sox just totally came out, and they put out a statement that Bill James, then the Red Sox just totally came out and they put out a statement that was like, we've never heard of this Bill James person. He doesn't work for us. I don't

know what you're talking about. They said, I guess, that he is a consultant, not an employee, even though he has been doing whatever he does for them for like 15 years at this point and has won four World Series with them and is listed on their website as a senior advisor. Anyway, they said his comments were inappropriate, that players are the backbone of the industry and the franchise, and to insinuate otherwise is absurd. There were many players who were up in arms about this and former players who were up in arms about this and Justin Verlander tweeting about it and Al Leiter tweeting about it. Anyway, it got out of hand quickly. And I think it obviously snowballed in a way that James didn't foresee and wasn't immediately aware of. But I think what he was trying to say with the replacing players comment, and this actually reminded me of something that Sam and I talked about on the

podcast, I don't know when, years ago. But we were thinking how much of our enjoyment of baseball is dependent on the skill level of the players. Like Major League Baseball, it was the next best players like would we even notice or is baseball just all relative so that you're watching players of roughly the same skill level play each other and it looks like baseball more or less and so we kind of had a philosophical discussion about that and we had also had a discussion at some point about who the game belongs to and does it belong to the players or does it belong to the fans? I think that's sort of what Bill James was saying. Like, hey, players come and go. And, you know, there's always a new crop of players.

And so no one group of players or no one player is baseball any more than he kept using the beer vendor example. That probably wasn't the best chosen example, but that's what he was saying. But because he was talking about players being underpaid, because he was using the replacement player language, which obviously conjures memories of the strike and scabs, obviously this was an ill-advised thing for a team employee of any capacity to say,

just have the perception of a baseball operations person saying something about players being replaceable and you can just swap them in and out. Obviously, that's going to be taken the wrong way, and even if you take it in the right way, it's not great. And unfortunately, I think it kind of contributes to this perception that sabermetricians are soulless robots who just want the most efficient rosters and don't care about any of the players as individuals, which I don't think represents most of our views. I don't think it even represents Bill James's views, but that's what a lot of people are going to take away from this, that the players are just cogs in the machine. All we care about is dollars per war.

Of course, baseball owners have historically acted that way, but that's not a creation of stat heads. That's the reserve clause. Three things, I guess. One, I also deliberately tried not to pay too close attention to this. I don't follow Bill James. I have been in no way encouraged to follow Bill James since the fallout began. There's really no benefit to my life to keeping aware of these situations because, you know, people say stupid things, and then you kind

of move on having been somewhat informed of that person's viewpoint. A second thing he's right in that we all move on from everything. We all die. The world continues. I don't know if the world will always continue. The world will continue. Humans won't. But, you know, there can be a horrifying tragedy. Then you're sad about it for a week and then everybody moves on. You can lose a beloved friend or family member. Eventually you move on everybody moves on from everything and then eventually people will move on from you you are not that important to anybody everybody just worries about themselves and then you die and everything is the same as it was because we are just not that important the third thing is that i think in almost every case bill james if on in a different format if you gave bill James 10,000 words to explain his argument, it would make a lot more sense.

Twitter, as you said, is unfiltered and brief, and it doesn't give you that much of an opportunity to explain nuance. Now, Bill James continued to double down, which is a mistake. And again, because I didn't read all the tweets, because I don't care, that I don't know the entirety of his argument. didn't read all the tweets because i don't i don't care that i don't know the entirety of his argument but you it's one thing to say the players were overpaid and if we replace all of the players with a whole new crop of talented lesser talent but still talented players then people would be okay with that and that's okay that's something to discuss you and sam have already discussed that but this is uh this is a market where we're not talking about removing all 750 plus players let's say that you're taking away one player or you have

the option of taking away one player players mean something to teams relative to other players and other teams because this is the market that exists if if you want Bryce Harper you have to pay a lot of money to get him because he is very good and if somebody else if your rival gets him that team is going to be better than your team and then that has economic ramifications for that team and for your team and you you're trying to be good. And if you decide, I don't want to pay major league players. Well,

unless you are incredibly good at player development and player scouting, you are going to suck and you are going to lose a lot of money. So it has, I think is pretty obvious. And this is by no means original players are paid in accordance to our societal values and in accordance to the money that the teams generate. So there is nothing wrong with player salaries.

And if you have a problem with player salaries, then your problem is really with how much money we are giving to baseball teams. Right. Yeah. And Bill James, I think, has a history of saying things along these lines or writing things along these lines about players being overpaid potentially. And I think in a sense, it's true in that they play a game and there are people who do pivotal jobs in society who are paid tiny fractions of what baseball players are paid. But

the way that this works is if the baseball players don't get that money, then the owners get the money and the owners are even richer than the baseball players. So if you want to say that your heart doesn't bleed for major leaguers who are making $15 million instead of $20 million or whatever, I understand that. And certainly you can reserve your greater sympathy for minor league players or for players early in their career who have not reached free agency and are producing way out of proportion to what their salaries are. So that is true. But when you say that players are overpaid, which is something that fans have been saying going back forever, you're essentially just saying that you want the money to go to ownership unless

you're proposing some kind of radical redistribution of wealth in baseball, which maybe would be good, but it's not something that is imminent. So I think that kind of language is pretty charged at this point when everyone is wondering if we're heading for a work stoppage. And Bill James was not saying that every player is the same as every other player, you know, like the Justin Verlander tweet about how, well, what would the Red Sox think about Bill James saying that Mookie Betts and Xander Bogarts and all these good Red Sox players are replaceable? Obviously, he wasn't saying that if you just replace the Red Sox roster with the AAA roster, they'd be just as good. He's talking about this strange hypothetical that is kind of divorced from that whole issue and wasn't communicated clearly. So it was a combination, I guess, of poor communication, questionable viewpoints on the whole economics of baseball to begin with, combined with Twitter,

combined with some words that I think made people think that he was saying even more than he was saying, combined with the fact that he's a team employee and probably shouldn't be talking about these things publicly. It's a weird kind of unique situation because it's Bill James, because he has changed baseball so dramatically because many of us owe him our careers indirectly. And he's in this weird sort of hybrid space that very few baseball team employees are, where he's a public figure and he talks and he writes and he does interviews but he's also working for the red sox which puts the red sox in awkward positions at times and i think he maybe even doesn't realize how it's perceived because some

people don't know the bill james that we know they just know if they know any bill james they know the red sox employee bill james who is just coming out with these comments about players being replaceable so gotta be careful about what you say in 1998 in 1999 tim allen of home improvement made 1.25 million dollars per episode and just adjusted for inflation that's 1.836 million dollars per episode in today's money that is not the highest the highest inflation adjusted per episode salary belongs to ray romano if everybody loves raymond uh in 2003 through 2005 i don't know how much work goes into filming 25 minutes of a sitcom it is definitely more than 25 minutes of filming i get it it's a job but you want to talk

about baseball players being overpaid? They are far from the only people who are making this kind of money for reasons of entertainment. And at least baseball players are giving you three and a half hours, sometimes seven and a half hours of entertainment per day. Yes, that is right. Alright, so we will take a quick

break and we will be back with one of those players, F.P. Santangelo, to talk about sign stealing and playing for the expos and very bonds and playing multiple positions and a few other topics too don't steal our sun All right. So we are joined now by former major league player of almost every position, FP saidangelo, who has been broadcasting for the Nationals for the past several years.

Hey, FP, how are you doing? Hey, man, great. Thanks for having me on today, guys. Appreciate it. Yeah, we're happy to. So there are a few things that we will ask you about, but what I wanted to start with, what I told you we wanted to talk to you about, is sign stealing, because this was just a constant story. During the playoffs playoffs we were hearing about it seemingly every day there were scandals and people suspecting things and teams mixing up their signs and i know that this is something that you talk about on the broadcast from time to time

and have some expertise so wanted to talk to someone who did because we are just wildly speculating when we talk about these things so So how does one become a sign stealer? Like at what point in your baseball career do you become adept at this and how does it happen? Well, I mean, those are great questions. But I think when you talk about baseball today and everybody trying to get an edge any way you can, and you guys would know as well as anybody with the analytics and all the information that everybody's putting in on a daily basis, whether it be to have a formula to kind of predict the future of a player and what they're going to bring to a ball club when you go out and sign a free agent or kind of predict, you know, the

possibility of if you're going to win or lose and who you're going to put in the lineup, who's going to be successful. So teams now obviously are hiring dozens of people on the analytics side to get an edge, but there's still the old school part about baseball where you're side to get an edge, but there's still the old school part about baseball where you're trying to get an edge during the game. And I think it's as old as baseball itself. And my whole theory is, and I don't know if you've heard me on the broadcast is if, if I'm stealing your signs, that's bad on you because your shot signs shouldn't be that easy for me to get them. It should be more of a complex deal where, you know, you have wipes as a pitcher. If you don't like this, we're going to go from the sequence when a runner's on second

base. And usually, for people that don't know, it's the last sign, first sign after two. So two's the indicator. So you go one, three, wiggle, change up, two. Then one, it's a fastball. So the first sign after two. If you're on second base and you pay half attention, you can get it within a couple of pitches if you're that kind of player a lot of guys do it in scouting now in video and by the time you get out to second base you're like hey this pitcher

pitcher x this starting pitcher loves to use first sign after three or the first sign after an out so say there's one out in the inning you're going to use the first sign after one if there's two outs in the ending use the first sign after two if there's one out in the inning, you're going to use the first sign after one. If there's two outs in the inning, you use the first sign after two. If there's no outs in the inning, you use the first sign. So there's all kinds of different ways. Oral Hershiser had some crazy sequences

that he would go through that you had to have your calculator in your back pocket when you played behind him to figure out, I played with him in Los Angeles with the Dodgers. So now you're seeing this mad hysteria

and paranoia. And I think the teams that go out to the mound to change shines the most in the pitchers, you know, that are looking at the guy in second base the most, those are the teams that do it the most, because if you're doing it, you know what you're doing. So you're paranoid about the other team doing what you're doing. Pitchers sit in the dugout for four days between starts and they listen to all the chatter, bro. They're using first sign on second base, bro. He's felt he's flaring his glove on a change up he's come and set higher on a fastball when they're tipping pitches so you hear all this and now there's this this huge

paranoia and you guys have seen it i've seen it the uh multiple signs with no runners on now so that leads me to believe and i didn't see a lot of the playoffs because i'm in dublin ireland for the winter and it was on at one or two in the morning here, and I watched highlights here and there. But when you're seeing teams give multiple signs with nobody on, in my opinion, they're telling you they think the other team is going to a whole other level with, I don't know, video and scoreboards and stuff like that. So real weird. Could be first base coach, third base coach stealing signs with nobody on. And the way they're standing down there in the box, if I'm real close to you and you kind of see me closer to you out of the corner of your eye, it's a fastball. If you

see me way further back and I walk back to the back of the box, it's off speed. So base coaches can tip pitches based on one sign with nobody on because base coaches can see everything just like a runner can if a catcher is wide open. So there's all kinds of different ways to steal them. There's all kinds of different ways to relay them. And I guess the key is for me back in the day, I would get them a lot and guys didn't want them. So how I would relay them, and this goes back to my college days, if I had two feet on top

of second base and I'm standing with both my cleats on top of the bag, turning around, looking at center field, that means I had them. If I had one foot in the dirt and one foot on the base, on the top of the base, that means I didn't have them. So that was the key. If you look between pitches in college, we did this in junior college and at Miami, where if I was standing on the bag, I had the signs. So then you take it to a step further when you get in your lead and you stop in your primary lead. If my right foot went first and I extended my lead, it was a fastball. If my left foot went first, extended my lead, it was off speed. And if they change the signs and I didn't get them, or I wasn't sure. And I thought I had them. If I took my helmet off, that was the wipe off. So if I took my helmet all the way off my head, kind of like

wiped it off, put it back on my head, that meant I screwed up. I didn't get them and don't look at me anymore. So there's all kinds of, there's all kinds of ways to do it. But I think you guys, and I know I'm talking way too much. No, I think, I think when you start taking it to the scoreboard or somebody in the scoreboard or a video camera in center field or you have somebody in the dugout that's not supposed to be in the dugout and you start going that route and apple watches last year and quick story dusty baker had a heart monitor watch on during the playoffs and i don't think this ever really got out that major league baseball actually in the middle of a game against the cubs in the playoffs sent somebody into the dugout to tell dusty he had to take his watch off he's like man i'm 70 years old this is my heart monitor it's

not an apple watch it has nothing to do with stealing signs just tell me if i'm gonna have a heart attack or not so um i mean so i think when you take it to the electronic level and now the crowd or somebody in the crowd that i mean now we're talking like a whole new level stuff and i think you know maybe that's where it's getting to now with everybody trying to get an edge, whether it's crunchy numbers, whether it's your analytics department, or whether it's somebody in the stands stealing signs. Yeah. And as people who did watch almost the entire playoffs, I can tell you that most teams, not all teams, but most teams were using the more complicated signs with nobody on base. And so it seems like most of the league was certainly paranoid,

and not just the teams who were playing against the Astros. So you mentioned, at least back in your day, when you were so good at this, you started getting adept at this in junior college, that you would be good at getting the signs. But you also mentioned that a lot of guys, a lot of hitters, wouldn't want them. They wouldn't want to use them. So this is where I think we have this big disconnect in understanding, or at least the most difficulty in understanding, because it seems

intuitively, if you know what pitch is coming, that's great. But if some hitters also don't want the signs, then that suggests it can't be that great, because otherwise the hitter would want the advantage. So can you tell us a little bit about the process and maybe your understanding of how effective these communications are in helping out the hitters? Well, it's a case-by-case basis. If you're a veteran hitter, and Jason Giambi was real good at it. Barry Bonds was probably the best I had ever played with, where a pitcher's tipping his pitches. So say a pitcher, like his left eyebrow would twitch.

Barry would see it change up, hit it out of the ballpark. But here's the deal you have to be disciplined enough with your pulse and your game plan to be able to take a pitch that you know is coming so it's not as advantageous as you think so if i'm on second base and i tell you a fastball is coming or the pitcher wiggles his glove a certain way i know a fastball is coming a lot of guys get so excited that they have the pitch they swing at it no matter where it is so you take it to a whole new level with controlling wiggles his glove a certain way and I know a fastball is coming. A lot of guys get so excited that they have the pitch, they swing at it no matter where it is. So you take it to a whole new level with controlling the pulse, staying with your game plan.

And if I'm sitting on a fastball middle away, that I look at the pitcher or the guy on second base and he tells me a fastball is coming and now I have to lock it in middle away. I can't just go, oh, I got the pitch. And you swing a fastball over your head or, oh, I'm sitting on a curve ball. Oh, he's throwing a curve ball. He just fanned his glove. And I swing at a curve ball in the dirt. So it's super hard in front of 50,000 people, the highest level to decode everything. Once you got it, it spreads like wildfire in the dugout. This guy's doing this on certain pitches. They're using the sign and some guys will be, I don't want

to know why don't they want to know they don't have the discipline to take the pitch if it's coming and they feel like they're better hitters if they're reactionary versus, you know, that's what they've been doing their whole life. Hey, I've never known what pitches have come my whole life. I'm a 300 hitter. I made it to the big leagues. I hit 30 home runs every year. I don't need to know what's coming, but if you do know what's coming and you can stay disciplined to your game plan and make that pitch be in the zone that you're looking in, that's when it becomes advantageous. Yeah. And there are many stories about pitch tipping in the postseason, especially because teams are doing all this advanced scouting and they're watching tons of video on their opponents and we're all watching

the same game. So this past month, there were many stories, whether it was Rich Hill or Luis Severino or Craig Kimbrell. And we never know, I think, what we should make of this and whether it really is responsible for what we're seeing. Because with Kimbrell, for instance, there was a story about, well, he was holding his ball in his gloves slightly differently depending on what pitch he was going to throw. And there was an article at The Athletic about it. And it was so subtle, it seemed to us, and we couldn't tell how obvious it would be to the hitters. And it wasn't clear to us, well, is he pitch tipping or is it just that his command is off? Because it seems like he's just not hitting his spots, but maybe it just looks like that because guys know what's coming and they're not swinging. So is it often that it makes a real difference? Like someone will have a bad outing because of this, or is it just a small factor that sometimes swings things one way or another? No, there's the whole mental side of the game that, you know, no offense guys at analytics can't predict. So if I'm out there and I think a guy in second base is relaying signs, it gets in my head. If I'm out there and I think I'm

tipping pitches or I've been told I'm tipping pitches, it gets in my head. So now it starts taking away from the flow of being an athlete and not thinking. Whenever somebody's in the zone, like Pierce was in the playoffs, he's not thinking. He's just walking up there, see ball, hit ball. Whenever Kimbrell's locked in, he's not wondering if they have their pitches. He doesn't give a crap. He's just throwing 99 and his nasty slider web power curve, whatever you want to call it. So now if, if I think that they might have it, you know, there's another advantage I didn't talk about. If, if, if I have Trevor Hoffman's changeup, which is one of the best pitches I ever saw, I'm not swinging at it. So now I take a pitch out of his arsenal. He was fastball changed.

So if I know if the changeup is coming, I'm not going to swing at it. I'm just going to take it. If you know, Craig Kimbrell's off speeds coming, it's nasty as hell. You're not going to swing at it. So now you eliminate a pitch that you can't hit and you kind of paint him into a corner where now he didn't do that. So I know a fastball is coming. Then you still have to be disciplined enough to get the fastball in the zone or get the fastball as a strike. But I think the mental side of it, I used to have, I was the guy on the bench that would find everybody out. I was really good at that throughout my career. And I would have my own pitchers ask me to watch them when I wasn't playing, which is a lot because I was more of a bench guy throughout my career. And they'd say, hey, lock in on me tonight and tell me if I'm

doing it. And then sometimes you'd tell them, and pitching coaches would come up to you and say, dude, don't tell him because now you're in his head so deep and he's out there changing his whole delivery because now he's thinking too much and you know just if he asks you again just say i didn't see anything because he's a mental case whoever the pitcher is so a lot of guys while they want to know they can't handle knowing because it really gets in their head and i think that's where the real advantage is for a hitter if if he's thinking out there just like if i'm'm thinking in the batter's box too much, I'm not going to be as athletic as I should be. I'm not going to be as reactionary as I should be. And then you get the whole mental side of the building condos in your head and you're thinking too much. And do they have cameras?

Are they stealing signs? Am I tipping my pitches? Baseball at that level moves so fast and it's all the greatest players in the world that if you let anything clutter your mind, you know, you guys know how however many milliseconds it takes to make a decision to hit a baseball that's coming 95 miles an hour. And if you're thinking about anything else but seaball, hitball, it's just not going to happen. So there's a whole mental side of it if you think you're tipping or the relaying signs that gets in people's heads so it seems like teams are sort of incentivized if you're talking about a rival pitcher you're sort of incentivized to get that picture thinking that you're spying on them thinking that you have a signs especially maybe you just had a good game against them or if you have a pitcher let's call him i don't know louis severino just had a bad game a bad stretch of games if you're the yankees maybe you don't know what the reason is, but you'd be incentivized to say, hey, we think you're tipping your pitches.

Let's make this slight mechanical tweak. He doesn't know if that's going to make a difference or not, but if you let him think that it's going to make a difference, then that could mentally put him at ease. Is this sort of along the right lines? No, no, yeah, you guys are onto it. Plus, I mean, I wish we could mic up a major league dugout for a game. I mean, we would scream, we got your pitches.

We got everything. We know what's coming we'd scream it or you're scared you're scared i mean guys are yelling at pitchers i don't know if it's today who knows today they all love each other their facebook friends they dm each other i don't know if it's the same the way it was back in the day but we would sit there and i mean when i was with the oakland a's in 2001 with terrence long frank manichino we'd all be on the top step screaming at these guys like we got every pitch you're fanning your glove on your change up and just even if we didn't and just getting people's the mental side of the game is is is kind of the divider you know like a pga tour what separates guys on sundays the guys that are mentally tough they get you know, the guys that are mentally tough, the guys that are into the visualization, the breathing, that are stronger mentally than the other guys, usually can handle walking up the 18th fairway on a Sunday with a one-shot lead and a putt for par to win. That's the separator-divider, and I think at the highest level, what separates good from great is the same thing, the guys that can block out that noise, whether it's something that somebody told you earlier in the day something that you see in the heat of battle with the runner

on second base i've seen i don't want to say what picture a picture that i've covered for many years that doesn't play for the nationals anymore step off three or four times with the runner on second look right at the runner and have that kind of derail him in the course of a start that he thought a guy on second base was stealing signs i can see it every night guys from from the booth um it's something that i can't unsee as a player i can see when guys are relaying signs from second base it's kind of like x-ray vision i can see guys relaying signs of second base i can see pitchers tipping pitches every day when i used to go to my son's game in high school and junior college i knew every pitch that was coming the whole game just sitting in the stands watching i do the same thing in the booth every night.

Sometimes I'll text down to the clubhouse. I'll say, hey, this guy's doing this. This guy's doing that. If it's super obvious, if they want to know. But I've seen it derail pitchers that think a guy's doing it from second base. They'll call the catcher out. They'll wave them out. They'll change signs. But back in the day, if somebody thought you were relaying signs from second, they would step off, walk right towards you and say, hey, MF-er, you're going to get somebody killed if you keep doing that. My rookie year, I was playing with the Expos, and we were playing the San Francisco Giants.

And my favorite Giant growing up was Robbie Thompson, and he's playing second base, and we're in Montreal. It's my rookie year. For some odd reason, I got to second base that night. And I'm thinking robbie thompson this is my idol this guy grew up watching like when i was in high school in college my favorite player and he's walking over to me right now he's about to say way to swing it or something he goes hey keep that shit up you're gonna get somebody killed and i go what and he goes he goes

you're relaying signs keep that shit up you're gonna get somebody killed and i go i'm not doing anything i just got called up. I don't know. And so I'm like, oh, my God. I've told Robbie this story. We laugh about it every time we see each other. Yeah, never meet your idols. So he's pissed at me.

I end up getting to third base. And Matt Williams, the guy who I grew up idolizing as a San Francisco Giant in Northern California, says the same thing to me. So this is one of my first experiences on base against the team I grew up rooting for as a Montreal Expo. I'm hearing it from Robbie Thompson. I'm hearing from Matt. So something I actually did in my lead naturally looked like I was relaying science. I had just gotten called up. So there's no way I would have ever done it. And I only think I did it a handful of times at the major league level because guys really didn't want it for the most part. So yeah, that was, that was my introduction to my idols, Robbie Thompson and Matt Warren. So I understand the mechanics of what you're describing where it's standing on a base and

not standing on a base, something subtle like that, where the batter would just have to look to the side and see the guy on second. But when we're talking about a technological method of doing this, if there's video involved, if there's someone in the stands, how is there time to get that information, relay it to somewhere on the field, and then have it transferred to the batter in a way that enables him to actually absorb it and then apply it? How does that is? I mean, that's what I think we both Jeff and I always think when we hear about one of these elaborate sign stealing methods. It's like, how is there even time to do that? How does that work? I mean, I don't know. I don't know if there isn't even with the Apple watches on the bench. And the only way I think it could work and I have no proof it was stupid back of the plane drinking beer conversation when i was in los angeles as a dodger we always used to joke what if we put a small earpiece in our ear

and somebody sat in a clubhouse with a walkie talkie or something just said fastball and then we'd all start by the end of the conversation we'd be like oh there'd be a play at the plate i'd tumble the thing would fall out of my ear and i'd be suspended for a year but i mean what if like technology is so much greater than 2001, my last year in the big leagues. What if you did put a small earpiece in your ear, like way deep down, that couldn't come out in any way, and you had somebody saying, fastball, away. You know, I mean, with millions of dollars at stake for your career

and millions of dollars at stake, billions, whatever, if you win a World Series, I wouldn't be shocked if someday that came out or that happened i have no knowledge of it i don't think players are smart enough nowadays to do something like that not i mean smart enough or dumb enough i should say is the right word to use because if something like that happened obviously it would be a career ender but i mean who knows i don't know the other than having an earpiece and just making it be james bond stuff how you could get that to a hitter that fast i have no idea and i don't think anything like that would ever evolve or happen in the game you know why guys because there's no secrets in baseball you got too many guys changing teams every year you got too many guys that are free agents guys getting traded and if anybody ever had an earpiece

in their ear there's no secrets in baseball guys know everything about everybody nowadays especially when you're playing 19 games a year against teams in your division guys know where you go to lunch guys know your wife's name your kid's name everybody's friends everybody texts each other tweets at each other dms each other on instagram there's no way something like that could ever happen and get away with it because like i said there's no secrets in baseball on the other hand there was a story of uh of what was what was gates's first name back in the 60s who slid into second base with a hot dog in his pants anyway who knows yeah players try to do a bunch of different things but so okay if you can forgive a very fundamental baseball question here,

I pitched, I didn't hit, I was terrible at hitting, so they didn't let me do it. So, obviously, there's picking up a fastball, change-up slide, or whatever, but there's also, if you're a hitter, and you know just where the catcher is squatting, whether it's inside or outside, glove is high, glove is low,

you can kind of eliminate pitches right there. You can get a sense of pitch low and away. It's going to be like a change-up, or something off speed, depending on your handedness so as a hitter you're in the box obviously you're looking at the pitcher obviously you're not supposed to turn around and look but like do you kind of have a sense can you have a sense of how the catcher is moving around back there because on tv which is how ben and i are watching all the time it's two-dimensional you can't really tell what the gap is between the hitter and the catcher, but you've been in the box thousands of times. What is sort of your intuition

about how the catcher is moving behind you? Well, I mean, we talk about relaying pitches from second base. A lot of times teams relay location, and some location can give you a huge advantage in the big leagues when you're looking away and you get the pitch away. 90% of the time, if a guy's setting in, it's either a fastball or a cutter, maybe occasional slider in if you're left-handed and right-handed, if you're setting in, you know, right on right, it's probably going to be a fastball most of the time. So you can feel a catcher. It's kind of a feel if a catcher's got heavy feet and it's, it's not a big crowd and there's not a huge buzz in the ballpark, you can kind of hear them moving around back there and they'll move around in and then set up out. They'll move in and set up in on a throw over to first,

just because you're going to look down on a throw over and see where they're setting up, but they're just, they put the throw over down to first and they'll set up in to deke you. And then they'll obviously set up away in the next pitch. They'll set up in a different location on a throw over. Cause they don't want to tip the location. Cause they know a hitter can look back. A lot of guys wear Oakley's or sunglasses and they can you can if you put sunglasses on you can definitely see where a catcher's setting up and if a camera zooms in on you they can't see your eyes a lot it's a reason why a lot of players on day games wear glasses so you can peek and see location when you're hitting but i'd say having location knowing

where the catcher is setting up is great but you have to have a pitcher on the mound that can consistently hit his location for that to be valuable you don't have to name names but do you have any examples of a pitcher who you picked up something that was just incredibly obvious or funny or something out of the norm than the usual like was holding the ball a little differently or if you know the usual story that you hear. God, I can't remember the guy's name. He pitched for the Phillies in the late nineties and it was at Veterans Stadium and it was the most obvious thing I'd ever seen in my life. And it was my first at bat.

And I looked and if you see now, guys, they have an index finger protector. And when they have their index finger out of the glove, it's because when you change grips, your index finger will move. Well, this guy back old school had his index finger out of the glove it's because when you change grips your index finger will move well this guy back old school had his index finger out of his glove and it would wiggle like a freaking worm on off speed and it would be maybe no wiggle like a worm on fastball because he was digging for the fastball grip so his index finger would kind of do like these loop-de-loop circles like a worm and his index finger on off speed be perfectly still and i saw my first time up. I'm like, you guys aren't going to believe this. And I wish, I'd say his name. I really don't care at this point, but I can't remember it.

And it was the most obvious tipping of a pitch I'd ever seen in my life. Like, just looking right at you, index finger out of the glove, index fingers moving all over the place, fastball, index fingers perfectly still because he had a lighter grip on the off-speed, the change-up or the curveball. Just tremendously tremendously obvious and i don't think he lasted long in that game if i can remember so obviously there's there's a lot of overlap between sign stealing and pitch tipping similar sides of the same coin i guess we'll say but i was wondering there's been more and more conversation especially after watching these playoffs and just so many hitters calling time out pitchers calling the catcher after the mound or going through the signs again.

The multiple signs with no one to base has clearly slowed down the playoff game. And so there's been more conversation about a future, an oncoming future, where we have catchers and pitchers communicating via technology, whether it's some sort of wristband or earpiece or whatever. And I was just curious, when you have pitchers and catchers communicating in that way, you're not going to have signs to steal anymore, but you can still have pitch tipping, depending on what's called. And I was wondering where you stand on the idea of catcher-pitcher direct communication.

You know, as a player, I never cared how long the game was. I didn't care if it was four hours or three hours and 10 minutes or two hours and 55 minutes. As a fan, as a kid, I didn't care. But now I don't know if I'm just becoming a grouchy old man. I don't mind the time of game, but I do mind the pace of game. And when a guy constantly steps off or a catcher runs out there too many times, even with a six trip limit last year, it bugs me. I like to see the game flow. I like to see a nice pace to the game. And if it goes, you know, what's the difference between three hours and three minutes or three hours and 12 minutes, I really could care less.

I mean, if you're going to save 10 minutes here or there, I don't care, but I'd like to see the game move along. And if, and I'm for anything that helps the game move along right now, because there's nothing worse than a four hour game where it it's just bad baseball and you see it a lot nowadays because of the trips to the mound of you know all the the guy stepping off there's no measure of how many times a pitcher steps off with a runner on second base because he's paranoid the guy's relaying pitches and if it means you know hey you you have a microphone in your catcher's mask and i have an earpiece in but i don't know how it's worked in the nfl i'm shocked that somebody hasn't tried to intercept the play calling thing at the nfl level like an opposing team and frequencies and you know and i don't know how

all that stuff works but can you imagine the advantage in the nfl with the helmet and if you can get the plays from the offensive coordinator the quarterback and you're a defensive coordinator and you have some sort of relay message to your middle linebacker. I mean, as long as there's ways to cheat, there's going to be people that are going to try to do it. There are ways to get an advantage. People are going to try to do it. So I don't know if that would be something moving forward that happens, but I'm all for anything that speeds up the game. I don't think you should be in a rush with baseball because that's why we all love it to sit back on a summer's evening when it's 75, 80 degrees, just relax, have a beer or come home from work after a rough day of sitting in traffic just to

unwind. But when it starts to like drag on and you want to get to the end of it, you know, I don't know that we're getting the younger viewers to fall in love with the game or the younger fan to fall in love with the game like we should be. Especially don't get me going on starting these playoff games at eight, eight o'clock and them going to one in the morning and kids having to go to school the next day. That's a whole different subject. So whenever we have someone on from your era, particularly a pitcher, we just ask them an obligatory Barry Bonds question about pitching to Barry Bonds. What was that like? And you didn't pitch to Barry Bonds, but you played with Barry Bonds for a year and you kind of already gave us a quick little Barry

Bonds story without our even asking for one about his pitch tipping prowess and picking up on that. But you played with him, I guess, kind of between his first peak and his second peak. So it wasn't him at his most otherworldly. He only slugged 617, I guess, in 1999 when you played with him. But what was it like to watch him? Because I'm interested in, when I hear about him and his kind of just scientific approach to hitting, that always amazes me when I hear the stories about how he would prepare because we didn't get to see that. And he wasn't very talkative with the media. But you hear those stories from people who were in a clubhouse with him. Well, I mean, he was a great teammate to me. I only played with him for one year. And I could see how if you play with him longer,

he'd get on your nerves a little bit. But for me in 1999, he was phenomenal. I owe him a lot. I owe him a lot for a lot of reasons. But I was really struggling in April. I don't know what my numbers were, but they weren't good. And he said, you want to learn how to hit? Let's go. And he grabbed a bucket of baseballs. And he said, let's go in the cage right now before a game. And he broke down my swing. He broke down the art of hitting.

He told me so many things about hitting in one two-hour session. And he was throwing me flips. And I just got to the Giants. He's tossing me flips from the Expos. And I'm sitting there going, Barry and he was throwing me flips and I just got to the Giants he's tossing me flips from the Expos and I'm sitting here going Barry Bonds is throwing me flips and I'm like and he's teaching me how to hit so after that day I just went on a tear and I think my average got all the way up to 300 and bar none the best hitting coach I ever had the most knowledgeable player I ever played with and I owe him a lot for that I also owe him a lot for there were certain days he just didn't feel like playing. And there were certain pitchers he didn't feel like facing. And he would come over to my locker because we were close and he'd say, hey,

you want to play today? I was like, yeah. Because the lineup had already been up. He was in there and he'd go into Dusty Baker's office and say, hey, I can't hit this guy. I don't like hitting this guy. FP said, he's got me. And Dusty would trot out and say, you're starting left field today. All right. So I had at-bat incentives. So that's why Bonds' numbers are so good. Yeah, I had at-bat incentives. No, he didn't do it very often. But he did it enough for me to meet my at-bat incentives, my games played incentives. And he really locked me in from a hitting standpoint in the cage. So I owe a lot to Barry Bonds. And we've stayed in touch throughout the years. And I know that he's vilified a lot of baseball circles, but I judge people by how they treat me. And he

treated me real well. And he treated my son real well when I played there too. You mentioned that in part of your answer that you said Barry Bonds is sort of the greatest hitting coach you ever had. And Bonds, of course, is coached. And you've got Edgar Martinez has been a coach in Seattle and et cetera. And I always kind of go back and forth on this. I've never been coached by a Hall of Fame level hitter. But there are sort of two arguments here, right? Where you can have Barry Bonds who understands hitting better than anyone, because he did it better than anyone. And then you have someone else. I don't know. You can take, I don't know why this name comes to mind, but like Dave Hanson, someone who maybe it was, didn't come so naturally to them. And then

you wonder if you, if you had to sort of sort of guess, who would make a more effective hitting coach? Someone who had to work at it and it was really difficult for them every day or someone for whom they just got to a level where it was just so natural and they were the best hitter on the planet? Yeah, we always used to joke that how can Wade Boggs be a good hitting coach? He never knew what it was like to go home 0 for 4. But here's the thing. It's case-by-case basis. And the guys like Hanny who had to grind it out and we have one app out a night and had to do all this work to keep their swing fresh for that one app bat off of trevor hoffman or a billy wagner with a game on the line and do it successfully

play once a week and go in there knows what it's like to grind so when i say barry bonds the best hitting coach i ever had that was for like one or two days. And I think what happened to Barry Bonds in Miami, and I'm speaking from things I've heard and things I saw playing the Marlins 19 times, I think coaching on a daily basis, the grind for 162 games and getting there at noon every day, and then even staying late after games, that that might be a different story for a superstar player i think barry's knowledge of the game is like i said better than anybody ever played with but as far as grinding it out hitting coaches you guys get there at 11 o'clock every day they're going over tapes they're going over uh tendencies for pitchers you know guys start to straggling around noon 12 30 one o'clock they're down the cage they're throwing bp they're flipping toss they're watching video with guys. They're, they're, they're counselors

to try to get their minds right and their confidence, right. And then, you know, the game goes on and they're the guy in the dugout. That's telling you things. They got the iPads. Now they got the charts, the graphs, then maybe, you know, Bryce doesn't feel good about a swing after a game and he stays for an hour later and the hitting coach doesn't get home until 1 in the morning. So do that for six months during the season, another two months in spring training. So eight months out of the year, you're grinding. I don't know if a superstar player that's always been catered to, if that's the lifestyle he wants to lead. I think that was a challenge for Barry as a hitting coach in Miami.

Barry as a hitting coach in Miami, the knowledge and how much work it takes to be a hitting coach behind the scenes that nobody ever sees and the counseling and being relatable to players. And when you hit as many home runs as he did. So I think that's a challenge for any superstar player, but there's also been really good players that are good hitting coaches too. But for my money, the best ones to me were guys that had to grind. And I was a hitting coach in the minor leagues with the giants for two years in San Jose. And it's a tireless job. It's a thankless job. But it's also really rewarding when you click with somebody, you get them locked in, and

then you teach them how to teach themselves moving forward. So you never caught in a big league game. You never pitched in a big league game. You never played first base in a big league game. But you did everything else. game you never played first base in a big league game but you did everything else and there are more guys like that today because bullpens are so big that if you're going to have a bench spot you better play a bunch of positions and we just saw the dodgers and the world series they're maybe the the all-time kings at just moving guys around from game to game and inning to inning did you have any

sort of adjustment period when you would move from one position to the next, particularly within the same game? I think it's a great question. My goal was if you came to watch me for the first time as a fan, I wanted you to think that was my everyday position. I took great pride and I worked real hard at every single position. I was a short stop my whole life. And I think in end of A ball, double A, I started playing center field. I started playing second base. I started playing third base, the corner outfields. And then I became a utility player and it upped my value in the minor league system to be able to move through levels. But every day I would take grounders at second, short, and third. I would

take fly balls at one outfield position. I'd pick one on a daily basis so that when I walked in the clubhouse on a given day, whatever, if there was a four, a six, a five, an eight or a nine or a seven next to my number, I would have confidence that I'd already worked at that position. And like I said, and if you saw me play for the first time, I wanted you to think, oh, that everyday second baseman can really play. And if you looked, I think I only made 18 errors my whole career. That's why I stayed in the big leagues. I was, I was more than just adequate wherever you put me. I was a pretty good defender at third. I was a pretty good defender at short, second. In 1996, Rondell White got hurt. I played the majority of the rest of the season in center field. And Joe Kerrigan was our pitching coach. And he came up to me and

he said, hey, I know it probably won't happen, but I think you deserve a gold glove for how you played center field this year. He goes, you saved our ass a lot of times so that said I would move in the course of a game to different positions and I just became natural at every position I think looking back now it helped me get to the big leagues it helped me stay in the big leagues and it's also making myself a switch hitter when I was 18 years old and not being natural at that just kind of increased my value everywhere I could so that I could stay there for a long time and now oddly enough it helps me on the broadcast every night because I know what the second baseman's thinking there because I played there I know what the third baseman's thinking because I played there I know

what the center fielder did on that bad jump because I've been there and done that left field is a little bit harder because you're at the corner I know where that throw should have went on that ball and he didn't throw it there so even though a lot of pitchers and catchers make good analysts when they're done playing, I feel like a guy that played six positions and played them pretty well. I crush myself all the time on the air about my hitting prowess, but I was a really good defender and I'm not afraid to say that. And if they ever had a gold glove for utility player, I think I was worthy of one. And it helps me though, see the game from a different angle every night and analyze the game from a different angle every night. And it helped me stay in the big leagues for seven

seasons. And looking at your baseball reference page, you were two wins above average defensively over the course of your career. So, you know, there's some credit, although those numbers didn't exist back when you were playing. So I have just two more. One of them is quick. This is the less quick one, but there's talk of how baseball is looking ahead to some sort of inevitable expansion. I'm talking to you from Portland, Oregon, so I know this is one candidate city.

Another one, another candidate city, is a city where, of course, you have played. You were drafted in 89 by the Expos. You played with the Expos through 98, and while there was a competitive season or two in there in your four years with the Expos through 98. And while, you know, there was a competitive season or two in there in your four years with the Expos at the major league level, in your final year was sort of the beginning of the death of the Expos, as it were. That's the year that they finished last in attendance in the National League, and they stayed last in attendance in the National

League until they went to DC. So I was wondering how much you recall, how much you can say about your playing experience in Montreal, how much you were aware as a player of why the interest level was so low and how viable a market you think Montreal would be now or in 10 years. Well, no offense to Portland, but obviously I spent four seasons in Montreal and we're the better part of four seasons there. Hey, look, the fans of Montreal love baseball. They're very passionate about baseball. They're passionate about their players. There's two things involved here. Number one, when you had a Pedro Martinez,

or I'm trying to think of all the great Larry Walker or a Marquis Grism or Moises Salou, and you lose your favorite players every single year because when it came contract time, they just didn't have the revenue to pay them. That's going to sour anybody on the game in your city because they were passionate. They fell in love with these guys. You'd walk down the street. Fans knew what you were hitting. They knew you were seven and three in your last 10 games. They knew you were six games out of first place against the Braves. They knew what you were hitting. They knew everything. They followed the game. That coupled with you have about really three months where you can be outdoors there. And then you have this stadium that's indoors and it's eight miles outside of town. And so now do you really want to go indoors on a really beautiful

summer night when you only have so many months to spend outside there because of the weather and the climate? So two things. Number one, if the Expos ever had the payroll to keep their players and they had an outdoor stadium, I think baseball could thrive again in Montreal because the fan base there is super passionate. They're super knowledgeable. They get a bad rap for not going to games, but they had a lot of good reasons not to go to games. Yeah, we also only have about three months when we can go outdoors. It's relatable. So the last thing I wanted to ask you,

in 97, when you were playing with the Expos, you got hit 25 times. The next year, you got hit 23 times. You got hit a lot, FP. You probably know this. You wore the bruises know this you you wore the bruises can you just explain the experience of getting hit by a pitch and staying in the game because it seems like if i got hit by a pitch it would be the worst moment of my entire life

yeah you know the hardest part is that was a tough guy right little guy had to play hard you know get dirty run over yet and i could never. And I could never let a pitcher know that it hurt like crazy. But every single one did in its own way, whether you got hit in the elbow and you couldn't open your hand for half an inning, or you got hit on the funny bone and there's nothing funny about that. It just burns for like 15 minutes. I got hit by a cutter in New York. I think it was Yoshi that hit me with a cutter.

I'm not sure, but it broke my kneecap. I played with two months in Montreal, I think in 97 or 98 with a broken kneecap. It was cracked in half. I was taking pain pills every night to get out there and play. To this day, I'm 52 years old. My knee kills me every single day. I run probably, I don't know, seven miles three times a week, five to seven miles. And now it's getting to the point where I saw the Nats team doctor, the team orthopedist this year, and I need surgery on my knee again, because of getting hit so much in the lower half of my body and that kneecap deal that I had surgery on. So it was a way to get on base.

It was a way to score a run. It was a way to beat the other team. In junior college at Sacramento City College, we had a sane, no dodgeball. And if it was coming close, it was a way to get on base. It was a way to score a run. It was a way to beat the other team in junior college at Sacramento city college. We had a sane, no dodge ball. And if it was coming close, it was a way to get on and score a run and beat the other team. So I would actually lean into strikes at times. Angel Hernandez called me back once where he said there was a strike. I was about to call it a strike and you stuck your knee in there. He goes, I can't let you go to first on a strike. So yeah, it was just, it was part of my game. It was part of pissing youing you off it was part of getting in your head it was part of getting on base and find a way to beat you and you know if you threw anything inside i was gonna let it hit me i was gonna go to first and score a run um the funny story is kevin brown was with the marlins and i didn't know who kevin brown was at that time i got a couple hits off of my first game and somebody came up said you know he

led the national league in era last year was top top five, whatever. So the next time I faced Kevin, I think it was 96 or 97, whenever he's at the Marlins, he hit me, he threw a cutter in and I threw my bat, sprinted down to first. And I kind of leaned into it, like kind of let my arm go over. The next time I came up, he threw one right in the middle of my back, like right in the middle of number seven. So two years later, three years later later i'm playing with the dodgers he's my teammate and he comes up to me and he goes hey man kevin brown nice to meet you blah blah blah and i'm like hey i go you remember that game and he goes yeah because i figured if you want to get on base that bad that you'd lean into one of my fastballs that i'd let you get on base

the next time the same way so he hit me again so i have a bat sound assigned by kevin he said it says to my favorite target fp something something something he actually drew a target in sharpie on the bat and i have it in my uh in my man cave well so i just want to end on this note there are a lot of uh great pitchers you face that i could ask you about Things didn't go so well for you when you faced Greg Maddux, for instance, or Curt Schilling. Hey, I got two infield singles off Greg Maddux once. Two stand-up infield singles. So I don't care what the numbers are. I got two hits off him in one game. I think those were the only two. Walt Weiss had to go into the hole, and I beat them both out.

No, he was tough, man. He was real tough. Yeah, you were two for 15 against him, so those must have been the only two. Two for three that day, baby. But the thing I wanted to ask was you lost your rookie eligibility in 96, and speaking of former Expos, Bartolo Colon lost his rookie eligibility in 1997. He's still there. Can you imagine having been playing this entire time? Does it feel like that was another life for you, and he's still out there just still doing it? Good for him, man. Isn't that awesome? I mean, good for him. I root for him every time I see him go out there. God bless him. And it's weird, you guys.

I do think that when I'm down on the field every day, I'm like, I used to do this. And I think I talk about it a lot on the air because I'm still shocked that I actually got to the big leagues. I'm still shocked that I played there for seven parts of seven seasons. And so when I see it now, we've actually done some broadcasts where we're in the first row in the on-deck circle. And we've done the on the field kind of broadcast we did it a couple years ago bob carpenter and i and just to see how fast the game moves and i go i used to hit that you know on occasion i used to like hit 98 like how did i how did these guys do it and how did i used to do that so yeah to your point it does seem like

a different lifetime ago i can't believe i did it um and i'm still blessed and lucky that i get to go to a major league ballpark every day with my job and be around guys, stay young, you know, lean against the cage every day for batting practice. It's the same life that I've led as a player. It's just at 530 every day, I kind of gravitate up toward the broadcast booth, fill out my scorecard, do my prep work, have a production meeting, and then put makeup on in a tie every night. But I love what I do. I think I love broadcasting as much as I love playing. It's a fantastic second career for me, but it's really weird. There's some days where it hits me like, damn, I really did that. I can't believe

that. Well, we're glad you did because we got to talk to you about it. So thank you very much for coming on. This was a real pleasure. All right, guys, thanks for having me on, man. Anytime you need me, just reach out. All right. This was great. You. All right, guys, thanks for having me on, man. Anytime you need me, just reach out. All right. This was great. You can find FP on Twitter at fight and hydrant. And of course you can catch him on Nats games. All right,

that will do it for today. Thanks for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Just sign up there, pledge some small monthly amount, keep the podcast going. The following five listeners have done so already. Quinton Baker, Daniel Wilson, slash Effectively Wild. Just sign up there, pledge some small monthly amount, keep the podcast going. The following five listeners have done so already.

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