Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1321: You Are the Boss of Me

Episode Date: January 12, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo being plunked in reprisal for his home-run pimp, the surprisingly small contract of Yasmani Grandal and the state of the Brewers and the NL Central, Jed Lowrie and the Mets’ positional logjam, DJ LeMahieu joining the Yankees and the ramifications for Manny Machado, the latest in […]

For his age he is wise He's got his mother's eyes There's gladness in his heart He's young and he's wise My only prayer Is if I can't be there. Lord, protect my child. Hello and welcome to episode 1321 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. There is plenty of baseball news to discuss, plenty of Major League Baseball news to discuss, but first, Williams-Essidio's team, the Caribes, the Anzawatiki, have defeated the Navigantes del Magellanes in the first round of the playoffs. First round of the playoffs? I don't know.

Best of seven series, anyway. The Caribes are going to the semifinal. The Caribes came down from an 0-2 deficit in the best of seven series to knock out the Nav an 0-2 deficit in the best-of-seven series to knock out the Navigantes 7-4 in the decisive game six. That was a game where Luis Jimenez hit a decisive three-run home run to make up the 7-4 difference. But Williams Estadillo in the game went two for three. And in retaliation for the celebratory home run that put him on everybody's radar the other day,

he was drilled in the hip in the top of the ninth inning so williams estadio got drilled in retaliation no matter what you think about the unwritten rules and maybe i should have expected this in my head i never really thought about whether the unwritten rules had gone international i always think of like the the good old boy white pitcher who's like trying to exact his revenge but clearly that is not the case they'll drill you anywhere where you stare at a home run it's just the way of the world so this is a this is an argument that i guess we can have if this whether this should exist in the game but this is something that we can uh we can talk about but it's it's about more than just brian mccann it's about more than just major league baseball it's everywhere

but williams estadio was fine and in fact the game, he even had a ridiculous hit where he swung at a pitch and dropped it in front of the right fielder. The pitch was probably about two feet outside. He just kind of leaned and poked it, got a hit, made the third baseman laugh. It was just another big day, less viral day, but another big day for Williams Estadio. Yeah. I mean, this was how you're quote unquote supposed to do it. If you are plunking a guy, right, you're just supposed to hit him in a non-dangerous area where you have plenty of padding, particularly if you are Williams' Estadillo. And so in that sense, it was unobjectionable. It wasn't like headhunting.

I still think that's kind of a dangerous idea, the idea that there is anywhere you can safely hit someone because I don't think pitchers control is so pinpoint that they can always put it exactly where they want it to when we're talking about this body part instead of that body part. But it's funny, like I always think of this stuff as so uncivilized and retrogressive and primitive, just drilling each other with these baseballs. It seems just so old fashioned. And yet when I saw William Testadio getting hit I kind of wanted to charge the field I kind of I kind of wanted to like go down there and have his back and have someone else hold me back like I kind of I got it I'm so attached to Asadio and so protective of him

at this point that I felt like a faint echo, perhaps, of what an actual baseball player feels when his teammate is drilled, and you almost get this kind of tribal, like, they're attacking our group, we must respond and retaliate. I felt just a faint whiff of that. Don't come anywhere near our Williams. In fact, now that I'm watching this clip again, I retract what I said about how they went about this in a less dangerous way, because in a previous at-bat in that game, before he was actually hit, he got a ball up near his neck and head, and he hit the deck. That one didn't actually hit him, I don't think, but that's even more dangerous than the one that did. How dare they endanger Estadio?

This is bigger than your petty Winter League score settling. The man is a beloved international hero. There's an article at MLB.com. It's a Spanish-language article that was published on Thursday, written by Ignacio Serrano. And I have seven years of Spanish in my history. I know some Spanish. I can read a lot of Spanish, but my baseball Spanish is not great. And I am not above using Google Translate to try to understand a longer article.

And so the Google Translated headline of the article is, Williams Estadillo determined to take his success in the LVBP to the Twins in 2019. An inoffensive, perfectly fine headline highlighting the fact that Estadillo has been so good in a winter ball. But I would like to read to you a Google Translated paragraph talking about Estadillo. This is from, I think, about three quarters of the way down in the article. This is all Google Translated Spanish. Spanish, I think, about three quarters of the way down in the article. This is all Google-translated Spanish. Spanish, I think, not that difficult of a language to Google translate, but in any case, here we go.

Quote, It is a unique case. Counting all the levels in which he has played, from the minor leagues to the twins, he has exhausted 3,238 turns and still does not receive 100 chocolates. In fact, he has been shot 99 times, less than 10, for every year he is playing professionally.

How is that possible? So, Williams Estadio has not received 100 chocolates, but he has been shot about 10 times every year that he has been playing baseball. In this transited story, Williams Estadio, even more of an improbable superhero than we already thought.

Yeah. By the way, one other bit of news. Our guest on our previous episode, Shannon Towie from NASA JPL, she has been invited, I believe, to throw out the first pitch at a AAA Salt Lake Bees Angels affiliate game this July on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Pretty cool. Effectively wild bump. You come on the podcast and next thing you know, a high level minor league team is offering you a chance to throw out the first pitch. That's great.

Speaking of the effectively wild bump, our guest today will be the president, CEO, and founder of Fangraphs, David Appelman. And so if this gives him a bump, then that bump trickles down. You know how economics are supposed to work. And then we all get the benefit. So if that exists, we'll be talking to my boss and Ben's, I don't know, secondary superior. I don't know what he is to you. But anyway, my boss and a person that Ben knows is going to be on the podcast later. But I guess we should talk about some Major League Baseball first. It isn't just about Williams Estadillo.

So we've had a flurry of moves. We've had Jed Lowry signing with the Mets. We've had G.J. LeMayhew signing an identically weird contract with an identically located team in New York. And we have had, I guess now, over the course of our interview with David Appelman, Russell Martin is going to the Dodgers, and Yasmany Grandal, maybe most significantly, has signed a one-year contract with the Brewers. What do you want to talk about first? Yeah, the latest signs of the free agent apocalypse, I guess. We already talked about the larger trends in spending earlier this week,

so we don't have to rehash all of that. And I inserted a brief note about Grandal, which happened after our last episode, but before I actually posted it. So I guess we can start there because that was probably the most surprising. There's a few surprises here, but in terms of, well, the terms,

that was not what we were expecting, and I'm sure not what Yasmany Grindal was expecting. I mean, this is a guy who, if you believe the framing stats, has been the best catcher in baseball over the past few years, or very close to it, and here he is settling for a one-year deal after some reporting that suggested that he had been in discussions, at least with the Mets, on a four-year deal, maybe between $50 and $60 million. And maybe that was declined. Maybe it fizzled for some reason. The Mets went with Ramos. And now Grandal ends up on this one-year contract.

Granted, he had turned down a qualifying offer. So there is some draft pick compensation here, and maybe he's figuring between that and between the stigma from the NLCS when he was chasing baseballs around, ironically, against the Brewers. Maybe he thinks, well, I'll just go and I'll have a good kind of pillow contract year in Milwaukee, and next year I won't have any draft pick costs associated with me, so I can cash in then, which, you know hopefully will work out for him but he's a 30 year old catcher and you never know with catchers and it's certainly some risk to cash in then instead of now so how did we get here i think you wrote

a post to the effect of i don't know how we got there but i'm still asking you more or less now i there's there's a lot that i don't i don't even know if the Brewers know how Grandal wound up getting to them for a year. And it's important to point out, it's not like it's a bad contract. He's getting $18.25 million, and he can go right back in the market. So even if you thought, oh, maybe Grandal will get $50 million, and he signed for $18.25 million, well, he will presumably get paid something in the years after this one, and he can make up that money. It's not terrible. It's just surprising because there are teams out there who could use a good catcher. And again, statistically, Grandal has been very, very good.

He's been one of the best offensive catchers. He's been one of the best defensive catchers. All these teams are just losing their minds over trying to trade for JT Real Mudo when Yosemite Grandal is right there, only two years older. I know he's slower, but he's a better defensive catcher and he seems statistically comparable. Now, when I saw the Grandal sign, my first thought was, well, this is weird. I don't know what happened here. And within just a few minutes, I started receiving messages to the effect of, you know what the thing is, that Grandal is kind of like a huge asshole and like uh he's not real good at developing relationships with his pitchers and yeah i've heard that pitchers don't love working with him despite what the stats say yeah back at the time of that horribly lopsided matt camp trade

with the padres of the dodgers that involved grand all going to los angeles grand all hadn't caught the padres three best pitchers the season before it was tyson ross Andrew Kaschner, and I don't know, somebody else who's probably not good anymore. And so there was this whole problem with Grandal in San Diego, but then he went to Los Angeles and you might have seen the quote I embedded in my article, a quote from Zach Greinke in April of 2015 that said something to the effect of, I couldn't draw up a better catcher than Yosemite Grandal. And he was complimenting his receiving and his game calling and how good he was at blocking pitches.

And so Grinke at least was on board. And I am given to understand now that Grandal has improved his ability to maintain and develop relationships with his pitchers. I think it's worth noting that he's been the starter with the Dodgers four years in a row. The Dodgers are no dummies. On the other hand, he has lost playing time in the playoffs to Austin Barnes, even though this year, at least Barnes was not very good. So I think there are, there are some least, at least some yellow flags here. There are some reasons to think, well, maybe Grandal is a little worse than his numbers would suggest, but statistically the indicators are so positive that he would have to be like, I don't know, literally toxic. Like he would have to

like emanate poison. I don't know. Was that the right word? He would, he would have to be like, I don't know, literally toxic. Like he would have to like emanate poison. I don't know. Was that the right word? He would have to poison the people around him quite literally in order for him to actually not be a valuable baseball player. But anyway, he's going to the Brewers, the team that didn't really have a great catcher. Now they have a great catcher and they have him for a year.

Really no market downside. I know there was the port that Grandal had turned down something like $60 million from the Mets. Ken Rosenthal has reported that as being almost true. And I don't know. It seems really hard for me to believe that that is exactly what actually happened. And I'm going to guess that there were conversations

between Grandal and the Mets about a long-term deal that would involve a lot of money. But I'm going to guess that it was never formally proposed to Randall because I do not think he would have or could have passed that money down. Yeah, right. And as for the Brewers, I mean, yeah, it's a huge upgrade for them over the catchers they would have had and the catchers they had last year. And it's, you know, the latest in a line of aggressive Brewers moves. We talked about it last year that they got Jelic, they got Kane. I mean, they had to give up real talent and money for those guys for Grandal. It's just almost like a no-brainer.

Of course, you would want to do this for that price, but it makes them better. It makes the NL Central more competitive. I think slightly before this, you had been asked in a chat at Fangraphs about how you thought the NL Central would shake out, right? And you didn't see the Brewers as the favorite necessarily. I don't know whether this changes things. All of these teams have been pretty aggressive, I guess, except the Cubs so far this offseason, but they were the best team in the National League by record last year to begin with. So it's hard to identify a lot of separation here. Yeah, the NL Central is likely to be very, very tight.

We have the Reds who are trying. The Pirates did their trying last summer when they got Chris Archer and Keanu Keela. So there are five teams who could be competitive. I know the Pirates have more to do and the Reds have more to do, but it seems like it should be tight. The Brewers are likely to be sort of underrated by the projections because they lean so heavily on their bullpen. I also wrote for Friday about Jimmy Nelson, who is just like a complete unknown. He could very genuinely, he could be worth anywhere between like zero and five wins above replacement. And I have no idea which it's going to be.

He's coming off what was termed a nearly complete shoulder reconstruction that he had in September 2017, which is bad, but the last time he pitched, he was very good. Again, just as I don't know if the Brewers know how Grandol got to them, I don't think even the Brewers are likely to know what Jimmy Nelson is going to do in 2019, but that could kind of be the whole difference. And if you look at the top, the probable top between the Cubs, the Brewers, and the Cardinals, you've got Jimmy Nelson, Hugh Darvish, and Alex Reyes, top between the Cubs, the Brewers, and the Cardinals, you've got Jimmy Nelson, Hugh Darvish,

and Alex Reyes, three seemingly very good pitchers. And I don't know if anyone has any idea what they're going to do this coming season, but that could be the entire race, just right there. All this other work you're doing, all this work around the edges, all this work the Brewers are doing to try to find a second baseman, and that could be it. It could just come down to those three pitchers. Yeah, well, maybe they could get a second baseman from one of the three the Mets have at this point. The Mets have like nothing but second baseman. So yeah, the Mets signed Jed Lowry, who's, I mean, one of the very best second baseman in baseball. And they already have Robinson Cano, who's one of the very best second baseman in baseball. Those guys are both in their mid thirties, but still really productive. And then they have Todd Frazier at third, at least for now. This is all provisional.

And then they have Jeff McNeil, who seemingly doesn't have a position now after a pretty promising season. This is like an entire infield full of former Brody Van Wagenen clients, which is very odd. I don't know how he can ever sort of escape the suspicion that that relationship is coloring this in some way. I mean, the terms of the deal were fine for Jed Lowry, a player of his caliber, but it just kind of continues this Mets trend that they seem to just like acquire guys a lot of the time that don't really fit that well with the other guys they already have. They'll get players who play the same position as someone else who's already good. It just doesn't seem like they're the best at kind of optimally configuring their roster. Yeah, this is one of the annoying things that the Dodgers have done lately is by just emphasizing versatility and having people play everywhere and having all these platoons. It just makes it a lot harder for people in our position to try to construct what a roster looks like and how it works on the fly maybe Brody Van Wagenen has a plan for how all of these pieces fit together I don't know what that is I

don't know where Jeff McNeil goes I don't know where JD Davis goes I know people have talked about how McNeil is going to be get time in the outfield now but they have Brandon Nimmo and they have Michael Conforto they have Keon Broxton and Juan Ligaris and eventually they might have have Ioannis Espinosa back. And so there's like, you're talking about a fifth outfielder in that case, but McNeil is now, I don't know, third on the depth chart at second base, and he's third or fourth on the depth chart at third base. And there's first base is kind of blocked depending on what Peter Alonso does. So it's hard to figure. Now, Jeff McNeil does have options and Mets could always put him back in the minors and just kind of wait to see what happens.

You could, in theory, see some sort of, if the Mets wanted to go bananas, they could trade Jeff McNeil and Peter Alonso and try to get something good. And you could even have said that would make sense as a starting point to trade for JT Real Moto, but then they got Wilson Rama, so that doesn't really work. So I don't know what the Mets are going to do.

I don't know what they're looking for. It is complicated, but you know what? That's thursday's news friday's news well i should also say brian dozer i didn't mention brian dozer he signed with national south thursday that's kind of boring he's a bounce back candidate whatever he's like jed lowry if you gave him a bad year in front and then said okay now bounce back right but then friday dj lemay he won the yankees i would like to i would like to put an idea in your head i think i might write a little thing about this but i don't know how i don't know how much you've watched dj lemay who versus just observed him statistically but at first glance and after a second slightly longer glance you know who dj lemay who hits a whole lot like and the answer is derrick jeter they're like the

same kind of guy hitting a right-handed line drive ground ball hitter who hits everything to right field to walk some and seldom strikes out. The profiles are like shockingly similar when I took a look earlier. Well, I don't know what to make of LeMahieu. It sounds like the Yankees are thinking of using him as a multi-positional guy and kind of rotating him around the infield, some third, some second, maybe some first. And obviously, they are missing Didi Gregorius for a while. And when they signed Troy Tulewitzki, we thought, well, that doesn't really affect the Manny Machado pursuit because Troy Tulewitzki is barely costing them anything anyway, and you can't really count on him to be healthy. But DJ LeMahieu, that's not nothing. Suddenly the infield picture is pretty full here. So this seems, I don't know if it precludes getting Machado, but probably does

actually make it less likely. And as for LeMahieu himself, I'm kind of perplexed by how to evaluate him. I know you wrote earlier in the offseason, and we may have talked about it, that it seems like there's maybe more in that bat that he just kind of hits the ball hard, but doesn't really hit for a lot of power, but potentially could, could be a candidate for a swing change. But, you know, he's 30 and he doesn't have a history of hitting well he just has like that one season where he hit well and it was kind of a babbitt year maybe and i think i just don't know whether you forecast that it's this kind of tricky discussion we're always talking about these days with changes you can make with players we've certainly seen guys who were 30 or close to it

suddenly transform themselves like the Justin Turner kind of transformation, but it's also difficult to count on that. So at minimum, I guess he's like an average player who is a really good defender. By the time this goes up, maybe the Yankees will have made all of this obsolete. I don't know.

But like if you tried to fit Manny Machado there, then I guess what? You would put Machado at third and then you either have to move Enduj hard at first or DH or you trade him. If you keep him, you put and do hard at first or DH. Then I don't know. It's hard to see where DJ LeMayhew even plays anywhere because second base is going to be Gleyber Torres and shortstop will be Troy Tulewitzki and then Didi Gregorius. Third base would be Machado.

So I keep kind of wondering if there's a fit where the Yankees trade Miguel Andujar to the Padres because the Padres need a third baseman but that is Miguel Andujar even an actual third baseman and that's a question that I don't really know the answer to because he's been awfully bad there when he's when he's played so the Yankees still have some moves to make or or I'll just put this out there they don't and you don't need to worry about what Manny Machado is going to do because the Yankees have addressed their infield so wither Luke Voigt of Voigt Voigt wither Luke Voigt wither Greg Bird they're around I don't know what they're going to be expected to do because DH is going to be a lot of Giancarlo Stanton and I don't know the Yankees have a complicated roster picture but this is also a team that's probably going to win 100 games so

it's hard to be too upset right and as for Russell Martin to the Dodgers, what does Russell Martin have left? He's still a pretty good defensive catcher. I think his framing has more or less held up, but obviously is coming off a pretty rough year offensively. Yep. He's 35. He's going into his age 36 season. If you look at Martin, when I have run queries of guys who hit the ball pretty hard or guys who have really good discipline still, I keep finding Russell Martin near the top of my leaderboards, and it kind of annoys me because I'll see him, and then I'll think, well, this table isn't very good because Russell Martin isn't a good hitter anymore.

So now I can't use this as a positive thing to point to. But Martin, even last year, his WRC Plus was 91, which is still better than average for a catcher. Still gets on base. 194 batting average. You look at that and it's scary, but 338 on base for a catcher. Yeah, but then on the other hand,

you look at Russell Martin and last year, he swung it just 14% of pitches out of the strike zone. Like he's become unbelievably disciplined. Now there's a difference between not swinging and having a Joey Votto like eye. And Russell Martin is probably closer to just not swinging. But last year, a lot of the indicators suggest that Russell Martin is still probably kind of like a league average hitter. And he caught 71 games last year and, you know, is not so much of a throwing guy. But he still has all of those leadership skills that people have always ascribed to him, and he can frame.

So I haven't seen yet how much of his one year left the Blue Jays are picking up or what prospects the Dodgers are giving up to get him, but the Dodgers clearly needed a catcher. I thought Martin or Francisco Cervelli made the most sense as sort of a stopgap until one of their two prospects is ready, and this doesn't preclude them from maybe making a JT Real Mudo trade if they wanted to trade Austin Barnes as part of it so options remain but at least the Dodgers now do have a catcher who is better than the 194 batting average that he just put up two more things I forgot to mention so one I uh I had forgotten we have already joked about the White Sox getting Yandy Alonso and signing John Jay associates of manny machado try to lure him but the phillies also signed manny machado's longtime mentor former orioles third base coach bobby dickerson so everybody is in on the signed everyone hire everyone who isn't manny machado to

try to get manny machado uh bandwagon and also uh something i think we both forgot to mention i think we forgot to mention is the uh the possibility the increasing possibility that a's first-round draft pick kyler murray is going to play football yeah that's right yeah we talked about kyler murray with eric long and hagan during the winter meetings and at the time wasn't clear what would happen whether he would try to be a two-way player whether he'd pick baseball whether he'd pick football i guess there hasn't been an official declaration but it seems like he's leaning football and not shocking that he ended up picking one instead of the other. I think from a baseball perspective, maybe the most intriguing

thing here is kind of hindsight and maybe foresight at the time by some people saying, why did the A's use a high pick on a player like this and commit that money and, you know, particularly the pick, the opportunity to get talent without also getting some kind of guarantee that he would actually play baseball. Because if you draft a guy with the top pick and then he doesn't sign, then you got a top pick the next year as compensation. But if you draft Kyler Murray with a high pick and he decides to play football, evidently the A's are just out of luck. So you basically just burned a draft pick. And obviously there was discussion at the time about whether Murray would actually end up playing

baseball. So I think people are questioning why the A's took this risk. I'm going to guess. So when the A's signed Murray, they were signing a guy who had been a sophomore quarterback at oklahoma and he had completed 18 of 21 passes for 359 yards i'm going to guess that when the a's were like oh yeah no you can play football they didn't expect him to be the best college football player in the world and go on to win the heisman trophy so you know it the a's they knew knew, I'm sure, that Kyler Murray was a good, talented quarterback in a good system, with a good program.

This is me talking about college football. Please don't point out that I'm being stupid. I think I'm toeing the line here and being okay. But the A's probably didn't sign Kyler Murray thinking that if they gave him the opportunity to play football that he would then become a possible or probable top five pick in the draft. They probably thought, oh, small quarterback, second or third round pick,

he will probably lean to baseball in that case. So still a gamble, clearly a gamble, but he exceeded the football expectations, and so now he might fail to reach the baseball expectations which would be playing it at all. All right, I have one last note to follow up to an email we answered this week. On our email episode, we talked about this far-fetched hypothetical where a batter runner would have to declare which way he wants to run out of the box. Basically, if the bases are empty, you could run to third base and then go clockwise instead of running to first base and going counterclockwise. And we talked about what some of the implications of that would be. Turns out there is some real-life precedent for this. So Effectively Wild listener Raymond Chen has emailed us about a game called Playground Ball. Now, this is, I think, back in 1908 or so.

This was supposedly space was getting tight. Cities were getting built up. It was harder to find big open spaces to play baseball. And so there was a variation of the game introduced called Playground Ball. And the headline New York Times said, Chicago introduces modified game of baseball for restricted areas. Good sport for schools may be played on vacant lots, schoolyard, or confined spaces, scoring by points instead of runs, etc., etc. So one of the things in playground ball was that the first batter to get on in an inning could run to either first base or third base.

All following batters in that inning had to run in the same direction, and this playground ball eventually evolved into softball. this playground ball eventually evolved into softball after some period of experimentation. The YMCA, I guess, standardized this game playground ball into softball. So thanks to Raymond Chen for doing the research and the legwork there. But evidently an early proto form of softball had this rule where you could choose which way to run. It had also been tweeted at us that what would likely happen is that as soon as the ball was hit and the batter would start to run in, the catcher would just yell out which base to throw to so the infielders would not be surprised at all. Yeah, good point, although that could be distracting.

All right, so we will take a quick break, and we'll be back to talk to your boss. Now the boss is coming You better look busy They're not hurting you for nothing So So we're joined now by someone who I'm a little surprised we haven't spoken with before. And maybe now that this is a Fangraphs-branded podcast, it feels a little weird to talk to the person who is in charge of Fangraphs. Since we are not in a position to be critical at all, we all just bow down to President, Founder, and CEO David Appelman. at all, we all just bow down to President, Founder, and CEO David Appelman. But I thought it would be worth having a conversation with President, Founder, and CEO David Appelman of Fangraphs because Fangraphs has become something of a behemoth within what is still a niche industry.

But David, hello, first of all. How are you? Hi. Thanks for having me on. We were obligated to because you threatened to cancel the podcast and fire Jeff if we didn't finally have you on. So, yeah, we just had to do it. That didn't actually happen. You know, so I've actually only been on three Fangraphs podcasts ever, and one of them didn't air. The very first Fangraphs audio podcast, Carson and I record together, but we decided the quality was so poor that we just kind of like shelved it. And then- The audio quality or the quality of the conversation?

Well, probably both, but definitely the audio quality. And then he invited me back for the 100th episode. And I think he did maybe, what, like another 600 episodes? No invites. So definitely not a requirement of employment to have me on the podcast. So this is a good opportunity to get everything that you've had off your chest now that Carson never really gave you a good chance. I know from my own personal history of having been in the place where you live that you do have an article framed that's close to your front door, right? Could you explain what that article is and the story that it tells? Oh, sure. So I think it's in The Office now,

actually. And it was an interview that was done about fan graphs for The Washington Post. And it's kind of like a profile of fan graphs and a little bit of me, but I think mostly of fan graphs. And I guess as the follow up, what is, in as few words as I guess you can manage, what is the origin of fan graphs? What was the motivating factor at first? What did you think Fangraphs was going to be when you began it? So I started Fangraphs mostly for fantasy baseball reasons. I was really into fantasy baseball. I started playing fantasy baseball in college, and I was a fan as a kid, but I hadn't really.

I had sort of lost interest in the game maybe during high school or maybe even after the strike a little bit. And then one of my friends was like, hey, you want to play in a fantasy baseball league? And I was like, not really. And he was like, well, we're just looking for like bodies you can auto draft. And I said, okay, sure. And then I got really into it and I sort of discovered Sabermetrics and mostly through Ron Chandler's site at the time, Baseball HQ, which was, or still is a fantasy focused Sabermetrics site mostly through Ron Chandler's site at the time, Baseball HQ, which was or still is a fantasy focused sabermetric site. And I thought that, I don't know, I just thought the information on it could be presented better. And I sort of wanted my own system or my own tables and everything of how to sort everything. And I wanted it all to be automated as well. So yeah,

I kind of found a stats provider and started up Fangraphs. Actually, a year before that, I tried to start my own fantasy baseball service, but the pricing on buying stats was so crazy that it wasn't, at least at that time, it wasn't realistic. So you could have said that you were trying to give a gift to the baseball community and provide us all with many hours of entertainment and enjoyment. But no, it was purely self-serving. You wanted to win your fantasy league. Pretty much. Yeah, that was mostly it. Also, at the time, sites like Baseball Reference, there wasn't a lot of sites you could go to for stats. I think Baseball Reference was only updating every year at the time.

So you were limited to ESPN, or I think the Hardball Times had sort of started up around that same time. So that was an option. But your kind of daily advanced statistics were just not really available. So there's an alternate history, a darkest timeline where you end up working for a team and you take the skills that you had developed and you basically build fan graphs for a baseball team so that only, I don't know, 20 people get to use it instead of millions of people. So how did you, first of all, develop the skills that

you needed to create something like this from scratch? And two, how close did that come to happening? You actually doing this internally for a team and why did it not end up happening? So the skills part, I used to work at America Online and I worked on big databases. At the time, they were considered really, really big databases. And you'd kind of put in your SQL query and then you'd come back maybe the next day and you'd get your results. And baseball data was really easy to work with after doing that because there just wasn't that much of it. So I learned a lot of the database skills at that job. I think I was there for four years before I left just to pursue fan graphs

full-time. And then just the coding skills. I'm always big into automation. And at AOL, I had automated a decent portion of my job. And it was mostly creating graphs. That's the dream. Yeah. And it was mostly creating like graphs and giant Excel packages for sort of executives and whatnot. And I just, when I got it, it was a big mess. And then I sort of turned it into a single button click.

So I was kind of familiar with automating a lot of graphs and just creating graphs. And yeah, that's basically where I learned this stuff. And then were you actively looking for team jobs or did you apply for any? Well, so I think in 2006, I think I was approached by the Yankees to do their stats system or build out a front end for their stats work. And I think if I had gotten that job, I would have taken it. I didn't get the job. So yeah, because if you don't have a real career in baseball and you're just kind of working on your own stuff and it's being seen by maybe a few hundred people or even a thousand people at the

time, it doesn't seem like enough. And working for a team is a huge step forward and it's a big deal. That's where most people want to end up a lot of the time. So I was really no different. And I probably would have considered working for a team up until a certain point, probably until Fangraphs had full-time employees, because it was kind of like this pieced together thing, which wasn't really an industry necessity at the time. At what point did you... I mean, Fangraphs, of course, is named fan after baseball fans and graphs after graphs. And in the original days of Fangraphs, I remember I was a blogger then, and I would look at the graphs, and you would have like a strikeout rate per nine was like measured against league average.

There was a ground ball rate. I remember it was like industry changing. It had batted ball information, just the basics way back in 2007, 2008, whenever it was. But at one point, did you start to envision that there was going to be like a role for articles, editorial content on the site? And then given what it is today, when did you think that that should escalate into something much more full? Well, I think in 2008, when... So I used to write for the site some back, I think in 2006, but I found writing very difficult. I don't know how either of you two do it every day. I don't know how anyone does it every day. It's kind of this magical skill, I guess. I've automated it, actually. Automated, yeah. Do we really have

computers writing your articles, Jeff? Anyway, so I couldn't do it and and I had there was actually a lull I think in 2007 with me and fan graphs where I had I thought I had pushed it to maybe as far as I could by myself and I had sort of lost a little bit of motivation there because it's it's really hard to just work on something completely by yourself and in somewhat isolation for a really long time without losing motivation. And so I put out a call for writers and in that group was Dave Cameron. And he was really instrumental, I think, in building the site into what it was today. So I think working with people really, really helps keep you motivated and trying to push things along.

I think another big influence, I think, in turning it from just some fantasy site with a lot of graphs was the Hardball Times and also just the reception to the site. So I had sort of started working a little bit with Dave Studeman. And just like the crowd I was in was more sabermetric focused and more real baseball focused than fantasy baseball focused. And we just kind of, that's what people seem to be the most interested in. So that's kind of the direction we took it in. And then obviously with the writing, making it sort of more of a complete product, I think really took off when we got writers. And people still think of it as a stat site and it is a stat site, but there is a lot of writing and way more writing than there ever was before.

of getting to read all of the good writing. Economically speaking, traffic-wise, in what way does the writing drive the site and introduce people to the stats? How do those things work together? I mean, if Fangraphs were just a baseball reference type site without such a big editorial component, would it work financially? Or is the writing just to get eyeballs to the site and to explain how the stats work and all of that? Is that just as important or more important as a component? Well, I think they work hand in hand. So initially, I think a lot of the articles were sort of stats explainer articles where there was intros to the stats before they kind of became more real baseball articles. So I don't know. I think they work, at least economically, the traffic to sort of both sides is probably 50-50, 40-60 maybe. So there's not really one component which is more important

than the others. Obviously, the stats drive sort of the engine of the site. And I think without the stats, maybe the writing doesn't work quite as well. But also the writing, or I should say that the stats alone are really not quite as complete either. So yeah, they're two sides to the same coin. And I think, yeah, I think that's what just kind of like makes it work. Also, the other thing is over time, I think Fangraphs was thought of, at least in my mind, I used to think of it as we're not a baseball stats site, we're a baseball site. a little bit outside of our wheelhouse, even though we still want to focus or at least remain true to our sort of core stats focus as well. This may sound sort of obsequious, but how is it that Fangraphs works so well? When you write about baseball and you write about baseball stats, you get to know all of these different sites where you can find this one piece of information

or that piece of information. And here's how you get to this arcane leaderboard that no one else knows how to find. And here's how you export this little bit of info there, if you even can. And you have to get used to this site times out a lot. So you have to restrict it to this, and this site is kind of buggy, and you have to do this and that and fan graphs just works basically just better than everything else and i thought this even before i was associated with fan grass in any professional capacity and i'm always kind of amazed that i can just like export the whole database basically like whenever and i don't know how that works from a data and bandwidth perspective but it's just like yeah yeah, I'll just export every season from 1871 to 2018, and I'll add all these different stats in there, and it's this giant file.

Probably you're hoping that not everyone who uses Fangraphs is doing that constantly, but how does that work? What kind of corners can you cut data-wise, if there's a way to explain to actually make all of that usable well i mean i think just as a developer i'm kind of i'm kind of anal about everything so and and i tend to be like very organized in terms of the database and and sort of the coding and so while fan graphs at least maybe before sean dolan i got there, was not the most aesthetically pleasing sites. I think we had this kind of beige background for maybe a decade or something. But I think with, I don't know, I'm very into like pixels being like very properly lined up and making sure it's fast. It wasn't, you know, I don't think it's worked ever quite

as well as you're describing it. Because a lot of people do end up having some issues with it. But a lot of that is ad related, which we have very little control over. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, one thing that we do invest a lot in is hardware. So I think if you look at our hardware bills, our hardware bills probably are way more than some of our competitors out there in terms of speed. So it allows our database to be a lot faster and allows for our web servers to be faster, at least if you're not dealing with the ads. The question Ben just asked was, how does Fang fan graphs work so well? But this, this question is sort of phrased in the same way, but with a different meaning,

because when you created fan graphs, and when it started getting off the ground, you were entering into, I mean, this has always been and will always be a niche industry, but there was already an industry leader, there was already competition when fan graphs came up and, I don't know, disrupted the whole industry or, or whatever it is. But what do you think it is that's made Fangraphs so successful in terms of its staying power and its continuous, if not year over year growth, and at least year over year stability? Boy, we're asking the tough questions here. Well, first, I think Fangraphs started at about the right time. I think if you were to start another site of this sort now, it would be way more difficult. I think the web landscape then was considerably more sparse and more in flux than it is at the moment. So one of it is just timing. I think the timing worked out really well. I think one thing is, is from a stats perspective, we're more of an aggregator. So I would just kind of go out there and look at all the stats that were being developed,

whether it was Tango Tiger or stuff at the Heart of All Times or wherever. And I'd say, hey, that stuff's cool. Maybe we can put it up. And people were really receptive to that, and they wanted their stats up on the site. And so in that sense, Fangraphs, we're not really quants. We're not really developing a lot of our own stats. So we kind of didn't really have any allegiance to anything in particular. We were just like, hey, that's cool. Let's put it up. particular, we were just like, hey, that's cool. Let's put it up. And I think that allowed us to be a little more open source, kind of have a little more community acceptance in terms of

what's on the site. Because the site from a stats perspective is very community built. We're not really telling people, hey, you should use this, you should use that. We're putting stuff up on the site, which people say, hey, I'm using this. Can you make it easier for me to get to? So from that aspect, I think we're not particularly dogmatic about that. I know a lot of readers probably think we're super dogmatic about what we use, but personally, I'm really not. If people want to see it, that's fine. Yeah. That's changed a lot, I think, at Baseball Perspectives. But when I got there, even just as an intern, maybe it's because it changed a lot, I think, at Baseball Perspectives. But when I got there, even just as an intern, maybe it's because it's a subscription-based site. And so you have to

provide a reason for people to pay for your site and not just go somewhere else. But it was always, hey, we have these BP-branded stats. We need to use only the BP stats and kind of just ignore everything else that is happening around the internet. And I tried to change that during my time there, and I think it has changed very dramatically. But that was always kind of an issue because it becomes this insular thing where you're protecting your brand and engaging a little less with the community as a whole. But I think that Fangraphs has always been aggressive about saying, oh, this is cool data.

We should just find a way to add this somehow. So how did you decide to go about acquiring sports info solutions or at the time, baseball info solutions data or inside edge data, all this stuff that was proprietary and teams were using, but just wasn't really out there in the public sphere, at least in a way that you could just sort on a leaderboard. Well, initially, Baseball Info Solutions was, I think they were the only company which offered to sell me stats at a reasonable price. I originally went to Stats Inc. at the time, and their pricing was pretty crazy back in

2005. And then Baseball Info Solutions or Sports Inf info solutions now like we've worked together on sort of stats feeds and whatnot for the past what i guess 13 14 years now and i'm always sort of like gently prodding stats providers to say like hey like can we get this can we get that but a lot of times like they start the stats for teams only, and then slowly it becomes more public or something they're willing to have out in the public. I don't think it really hurts unless the stats provider is collecting something for a specific team and only selling it to that one team.

I don't really think it hurts for it to be out in the public. Like they're not going to cancel a contract with a team just because data's on fan graphs, at least generally not. So Inside Edge we've worked with for maybe like five years now. We're working a little more with stats these days. So I don't know. I think I'm willing to just kind of like get data from wherever and kind of piece it all together.

I think the more data providers we have, the better, quite frankly. It was a few years ago that MLB AM introduced the StatCast concept. I believe in the early days it was referred to as OMGFX because it promised to reveal everything about the game. And I remember there was a little bit of conversation. Maybe it was taking place under the radar, under the surface of concern. And how worried were you around the time that if baseball wanted to, they could effectively, I don't know if it's put Fangraphs out of business, but just threaten the model by suddenly deciding to keep information private, keep new information private, and just supporting their own editorial workers on their own website? Ha, well, I mean, I think that's, let's put it this way. Fangraphs is a small site.

And so if, you know, baseball or MLB or wanted to kind of put us out of business and throw, you know, like tons of resources at this stuff, I mean, that's certainly possible. I mean, that's kind of like the Google effect, right? Like if Google goes into the business you're in, you might be in trouble. But, you know, I think there's lots of stuff we're doing, which like they're not necessarily going to go into. I think it's one thing I've learned over a lot of years of doing this is that there's room for multiple sites and one site isn't going to serve everyone's needs all the time.

And it's just kind of like there's the pie's big enough for everyone, at least in this space. So I think it was a concern. And you know, it definitely continues to be a concern, but I don't think it's, I'm not losing sleep over it. And I'm sure you never envisioned this site becoming what it has when you just started it as a really humble thing with a tiny staff or no staff at all at first. But what was your goal once it did become a larger entity? Were you thinking, I'm going to build this up into an attractive acquisition and ESPN will come along and buy FanGraphs and it will be part of some giant media company? Or were you thinking, I really like running this site and this is kind of like a

labor of love and we'll just keep doing it and see what happens? Well, so even when I started Fangraphs, I wanted it to be a business because when I worked at AOL, I was working in dial-up stats, which were not going to be a thing forever. Even though I guess some people still have dial-up service. But I don't think there's like giant departments that are dedicated to like analyzing dial-up stats anymore. So it was like from day one, FanGraphs was incorporated and I hoped it could become some sort of business.

I didn't really at the time see it. I didn't see it becoming really a media company, which I think we're closer to a media company than we are just kind of like a website or a data provider of sorts. So I don't know, for a lot of years, I was maybe interested in making it an acquisition target. Because, you know, that's, that's like what you do when you start a company, you're like, oh, maybe someone will buy this someday. So and. And also, given that it was very small, it helps to have some bigger weight behind you as sort of a small company. But I think, I don't know, I really enjoy running fan graphs.

I really enjoy my day-to-day and everything. So I'm not itching to sell it or anything. If someone wants to come along with some, know some you know everything's doable for a price i guess the valuation of effectively wild alone just mind-boggling yeah well i mean what so given that in your own words fangraphs is is closest or closer to being a media company now how much attention are you paying to the the broader media landscape maybe the specific sports or baseball media landscape obviously the maybe a company like the athletic has come up and provided opportunities but by and large this is not a great time to be trying to run an internet media business. So how in touch do you

remain with what the trends are in the broader landscape? And how sensitive do you think Fangraphs is or isn't to what seems to be the constant downward pressure? Yeah, I mean, I keep up with what's going on in baseball media pretty well. I mean, I think a lot of the big media companies seem to be moving a little bit away from baseball. But you know, that that's not such a bad thing for us. I think if it's kind of a double edged sword, because if the big bigger media companies aren't paying as much attention to baseball, then there's just like generally less baseball out there in the world, or, you know, in the public consciousness. But the people who really

want baseball content, they know where to get it anyway. And so I think it allows us to sort of hire better people and just be more of the place to go for baseball content, I think. But I don't know. I think media is going to continue to be sort of a tough space for a while. I think the ad landscape or sort of the ad revenue landscape is not good. I think something is going to have to change there. And that's not something which I'm personally going to solve. I think the big players in the industries like Google and Facebook and all the sort of larger ad networks are just going to have to come to some sort of agreement on how ads are dealt with. Because I mean, the experience is

not great at times. And also, I think the revenue is also sort of on the decline there a little bit as well. So I don't know. I mean, as time has gone on, people seem to be more willing to pay for content. Fangraphs doesn't have any plans of becoming a pay site, but we certainly have our membership. And I think that's something which is going to become more and more important for us. So I don't know. I mean, I guess we'll see what the, what happens at the, at the athletic. I mean, that's kind of an interesting, an interesting venture and they've certainly gotten a lot of money. And I think if they can, if they can succeed in, in becoming profitable and, and generating enough subscriptions, I mean, that's, you know, they're golden, they can succeed in becoming profitable and generating enough subscriptions, I mean,

they're golden. They can do whatever they want at that point. They're like another ESPN or another TV company, essentially, where the money is just coming in and they don't have to really worry about sustainability because they have so many subscriptions. And they're not beholden to the ad networks either, but I mean, you know, we'll see. We, you know, you just don't know if that's going to work. So given that, you know, if, if anybody's budgeting their own money, then they have

only so much they can spend on recreation or, or entertainment. There's a, there's only so much to go around. And I would imagine that it works pretty similarly with, with free time fan graphs. If for anyone who's ever written for a media outlet online you know that the the peak hours to write and to publish are between like eight and five eastern time because we exist to fill people's time when they're not working and so we are a company that hopes that people who are at work don't work and then use their free time to to read fan graphs now there was a if there's one area in media that's presumably not struggling and that seems to be if anything hiring and expanding it's political media i don't know if you're aware but there was an event that happened a few

novembers ago something happened and there's a lot of interest in in what's going on in american government maybe this is too too much of a to detect, but have you noticed any sort of decline in traffic or maybe slowing of growth as people might be spending just as much free time reading articles on the internet, but maybe fewer about baseball? So in 2017, I think that was definitely the case. I think 2017 was not a good year for sports media or sports at all. Because I don't think anyone was really, that wasn't anyone's focus. I think in 2018, there was maybe a little bit of political fatigue. And people just wanted to think about something else for a second. So I don't know, 2018 was a decent year for us in terms of

growth. 2017 was kind of like very flat. So yeah, I don't know. I think people's attention span for certain things, especially things which are not enjoyable per se, is kind of limited. So yeah, I don't think that election was good for sports media at all. So, yeah, I don't think that election was good for sports media at all. Well, what about another piece of political news or legislation, gambling legalization? Is that something you think about much in terms of the industry and Fangrash specifically? I mean, you have MLB doing deals with MGM now. Clearly, it seems like there's going to be more and more data being applied towards gambling and betting and wagering, and we're going to be seeing that everywhere. So

as a stat site, I guess there are some obvious ways in which that could be applied toward that, but I wonder how much you've considered that. We have a couple of ideas and sort of how, or a couple things that we were thinking of doing, But one thing which I want to make sure we don't do is become sort of a tout site or anything of that ilk. We're not going to like sell projections or sell, you know, pics or anything. I think all that stuff is, quite frankly, pretty scummy. think all that stuff is, quite frankly, pretty scummy. So I think there's been a lot of documentaries and reporting on just how scummy it is. So I think we want to stay pretty far away from all that. I mean, a lot of gamblers use fan graphs as a tool anyway. So I think we're positioned okay for that. Are we going to do anything sort of proactive in that arena? I think yet to be seen. I think we can kind of coexist or be part of a gambler's tool set without 100% catering to gamblers. It's kind of a little bit of a gray area for us, I think.

So I know what I do during my average day. I'll write today. I chatted and do this podcast. What do you do? Well, I mean, I certainly spend time on the phone. I'm talking to, I spend a decent amount of time on the phone with Meg these days, just chatting about editorial stuff and ideas and whatnot. So Fangraphs has like a lot of backend stuff,

whether it's maintenance on the database or maintenance on the servers. I've actually spent way too much of my time the past couple of years dealing with server stuff and making sure the site's not crashing and it's running okay. So I'm trying to get out of that business.

It's not that much fun. So we actually did a big migration just this week which hopefully gets me out of doing some of like the what i like to call plumbing and so i i just don't want to be doing that anymore i'd rather like build cool tools for people or be working on like getting sean like better data sets to build so he can build cool tools for people. So I also like, I guess I do like all the finances and stuff at Fangraphs. So that takes up a decent amount of my time. Yeah, there's just like a lot of like random stuff you have to do to like run a business, which isn't really necessarily glamorous, but it's just kind of like, it's got to be done.

So I end up doing a lot of that. So because this has been built into a successful business, there are people and teams trying to poach your people. And it happens fairly regularly. And obviously this happened at BP before you. And it's just a reality of the industry. When you get people who do good work, a lot of them get hired to go do it for someone else where none of us get to read it. So how do you approach, well, both trying to keep people and then trying to replace people and being proactive about responding to people departing? Well, first, I mean, we've had up until I think last year,

we had really great retention at FanGraphs. I mean, it was kind of incredible to keep the same group together for so long. But yeah, I mean, nothing lasts forever. And so, I mean, in terms of hiring, I'm very involved in hiring. It's something I actually kind of enjoy. I enjoy hiring. So it's not really, at least it's something I like doing. I think in terms of teams taking writers and staff, I think in terms of teams taking writers and staff, I mean, it's going to happen. And over this past year, I've kind of gotten more used to it and more sort of just kind of like, hey, this is something we need to prepare for. So I think having a really deep bench at Fangraphs is something which I think would be nice to have. I mean, we're actually about to go on a big hiring spree. So yeah,

I think, well, I don't know when this podcast is being posted, but maybe slightly after that, we'll have wanted ads up for various positions. And so we're just going to try and continue to find new talent and give people chances to write. I think that's something which Fangraphs can be really good at is being a place where people can sort of develop their voice and become a better writer and build an audience for themselves. And so I think that's a place we want to continue to try and be and do a better job of being that place where people can do that. So that's kind of, I think, editorially a big focus in the next year. One advantage, I think, is that you're the guy doing all the backend stuff and the database work. So if you don't leave, things will kind of keep running, which was an issue at Baseball Perspectives because Keith Wilner would go work for the Indians or Colin Wires would go work for the Astros.

And it's like, how do we find this thing? How does the site work? Who's doing the projection system? It was like all the really core essential stuff was being done by people who were being taken by teams. Whereas as long as you resist that temptation, then the site can kind of keep running day to day, at least in some capacity. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going anywhere. So at least the database will still work. So Dave Cameron is one employee who went to work for a team. And he was, of course, I think your first full-time hire. Carson Sestouli went to work for a team. He was

maybe your second full-time hire. Third recent employee who's gone to work for a team is August Fagerstam. And he followed a different trajectory because August was on, he was a full-time hire for, I forget whether it was a year or two, but he first came along, he was discovered, if you will, through Fangraphs' community blog. And I would imagine that you would say if someone wanted to write for Fangraphs or to get a little exposure that the community blog would be a good place to put your writing, to put your ideas. Do you think that that is one of the more underrated features of the website? Because it's been around for a while, but it's seldom discussed. But having been an editor of the community blog for a while before, I know that it remains active and popular with people who are trying to submit things on the regular. Yeah. I mean, I think the community blog is pretty valuable. I mean, a lot of people read

the community blog. You'd be surprised who reads the community blog is pretty valuable. I mean, a lot of people read the community blog. You'd be surprised who reads the community blog within the baseball industry. So it's definitely a place to get eyes on your work if that's something you're interested in. Yeah, and it's also kind of unique in that we pick and choose what goes up there. Or, well, you know, one person on staff picks and chooses what goes up there. And so it's not the quality level of that blog is maybe a little higher than just a bunch of random people posting random stuff. So we try and keep the quality level pretty decent. I don't know.

We actually just have a new editor of it, Dylan Higgins. And so it's kind of starting up again. And I hope people contribute to it. And so it's kind of starting up again, and I hope people contribute to it. And I wouldn't be surprised if we found new regular contributors do that in the future. I know there's been like some people post really kind of wonkish advanced stats work in there, and I'm always pretty impressed on occasion. Well, that's what I was going to ask about next and maybe last is the quality of baseball analysis in the public sphere, because I think the quality of baseball writing is better than ever. I think there are just more people doing it, a broader cross-section of people doing it, and just more of it. But in terms of cutting-edge sabermetric research, a lot of that's kind of tough because there's so much proprietary information.

We can't see all the StatCast stuff. Teams have all of this internal information that we can't access. And of course, once you do some innovative work in the public, then you get hired almost immediately. So do you find that it's more difficult to get that kind of writing or analysis specifically? Well, so that type of writing, I think, is trickier to get on a consistent basis from any one person. That's like being a very skilled analyst and also being a good writer is kind of like a Venn diagram, which doesn't really have much crossover. So finding someone who's able to both be a really good writer and do the analysis, it's just, you know, it's rare. A lot of times you'll have really great analysts who will write a couple pieces and then will, you know, run out of ideas or whatnot. And so, I don't know, like if you're a good analyst, you're probably, I mean, your career path is probably more viable on the major league team side than it is on the writing side. Because, you know, you do have to write every day unless you develop that robot, which does it for you.

So it's, yeah, I mean, I'm hoping we can find some regular contributors who have really sort of top-notch analytic skills. But sometimes it can be really – it's not so easy. And then like three weeks later, you would have to replace that person after that person has been hired by a baseball team. So the last thing I wanted to ask you is I know where things stand today. We're coming up. We're only about a month away from spring training, and we have all of the numbers that we have on the site. But are there any sort of upcoming new statistics or metrics that are going to be available on the site? Anything in the works? Or are things currently kind of at a high,

but static plateau? Well, the one thing which I can say for sure is coming to the site this season is college data. So we'll have college baseball data in theory, probably for the start of that season. I think that's the only thing which I'm going to promise. There's actually a big laundry list of things we'd like to do and some things that may or may not happen. So hopefully we have a lot more stuff coming. But we'll definitely have college data. And we'll almost certainly have a bunch of new interface improvements for the site as well, especially when it comes to the prospect stuff that Kylie and Eric are doing. Well, I would like to thank you for spending

some time coming on it feels like this has been a long time overdue i am surprised as i already said that we haven't done this before uh it was also an easy interview to line up which i really appreciate because you're just a text message away at all times and so uh david appelman i can promise you that this podcast will be published on your website within the next several hours. Well, thanks for having me. What episode number is this? This is 1321. 1321. Okay. So have me back at 2600 or something. Okay. Thanks, guys. Thank you very much. All right. So that will do it for today and this week. Thanks very much for listening. You know, I was remiss in not mentioning on our previous episode with Shannon, Brody Van Wagenen's wife's stepfather was Neil Armstrong. We were talking about Brody and the Mets with someone who works at NASA JPL probably should have come up. That makes him an even more interesting hire. Effectively Wild. David Appelman is a man of many virtues, but he does not pay me for this podcast. You do. So sign up, pledge some small monthly amount, keep the podcast going, as have the following five listeners, Harris Uden, Nick Bentley, Stephan Lund, Nick Koss, and Stephen

Wade. 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 please replenish our mailbag keep your questions and comments for me and jeff coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system thank you to dylan higgins for his editing assistance doesn't just edit the community blog folks also edits this podcast so we hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Dividing and multiplying, exchanging with ease When times are mysterious, serious numbers are eager to please