Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1396: Stars and Chubs

Episode Date: June 29, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Twitter commotion caused by the Pioneer League’s Grand Junction Rockies (who are definitely not named the Humpback Chubs), an Angels outfield sign and Mike Trout, the curious rise and fall of Yonder Alonso, the promotion of Rays rookie (and two-way player) Brendan McKay, the upcoming FanGraphs All-Star […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1396 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, returned from vacation, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. How are you, Ben? I'm doing well. Welcome back. Thank you. Was your week off restorative? It was indeed. And then I came back and being back from vacation is very stressful. Yeah. It kind of undoes a lot of the good. It can. But yes, it was very nice to get away. I watched baseball that I knew was not for work.

Like I was confident it was not for work for the first time in many moons. And it felt great. Baseball is great. Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, I still like it. So it's always nice to know that that's true. Dylan Higgins kept the site humming in your absence. Yes. Fangraphs still exists.

I get to say with just like a tremendous amount of gratitude and enthusiasm in my voice, thank you for editing assistance, Dylan. Yes, of all forms. Yes, yes. He did a great job. No one misbehaved too badly. Fangraphs marches on.

It's always a weird thing to leave and you're like, oh, is it okay that I'm gone? Shouldn't it be a little less okay? But no, it's nice when things still work. Yeah, right. What's the replacement level for Fangraphs Managing Editor if you can just walk away for a week and everything's fine? Very nervous about it. I guess Dylan's got a high war too, so that's probably all it is. So our plan for today was to do kind of a guest-centric episode, thinking that you had missed some baseball and work and you were catching up. And so that is kind of what we're doing, although I do have some banter too. But later in this episode, we will be talking to Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight,

who has taken a sabermetric deep dive Into the congressional baseball game So he has looked at it With a sabermetric eye And he has calculated All the advanced stats for all of the congress people And the game was played this week So we will talk to him about that And people who want us to keep politics

Out of the podcast, I apologize This is an incursion of politics But it is the baseball kind of politics So what can we do? After we talk to Nathaniel, we have the great pleasure of bringing on Linda Holmes of NPR, who just published her first novel, and it's called Evie Drake Starts Over. the main characters in this book, which is sort of a rom-com romance story set in Maine. And one of the lead characters is a pitcher named Dean Tenney, who is going through the yips. And we all know how that can be according to people who have gone through it. And so everyone in this book is having a hard time, but you will not have a hard time if you read it because it is great fun. We talked to her about the book, some spoilers middle of the way through the interview that you warn everyone about. So keep an eye or an ear out for that. But I think you will enjoy the book regardless. Is there anything on your mind

banter wise before I get to some stuff? I don't know. I don't know if my stuff is the same as your stuff. Yes, that's always the problem uh the grand junction rockies had an interesting day on twitter yeah let's talk about that is that on your list of stuff it's on the list nice of you to call them the rockies yep so i feel uncomfortable saying that word to co-workers the team that is definitely not named the grand Junction Chubs. Let's talk about this Twitter saga. I was kind of playing catch up. I wasn't on Twitter when this was first going down. And so it was a lot to catch up on what exactly was happening here because it just kind of came out of nowhere.

So, yeah, give us the backstory of the Grand Junction Rockies slash Chubs. Sometimes you experience in your life a strange day where Twitter is actually wonderful. Yeah. It's very rare, but it does happen. You know, it was 9.20 in the morning. I'm just going to read this and I'm going to try really hard not to laugh while I do it. This is a screenshot of two tweets by the Grand Junction Rockies. They have since been deleted.

And as far as I know, I have not checked today, have not been addressed in any way, shape, or form by the organization. You didn't make it through without laughing. Didn't even start without laughing. I don't blame you, though. The GJ Rockies are not considering changing their name and never have. And you're at this point, you're like, okay, well, like a lot of minor league teams do goofy stuff with names. So maybe they're just trying to make things clear.

There's no preface to this, by the way. No, no, no. So it just dropped out of the sky. We are owned by a group led by the Colorado Rockies, and having a team on the West Slope helps build their brand, suggesting we would be called the G.J. Chubbs is offensive and a slang sexual term for erection. They proceed to follow that up with a tweet that says, the G.J. Rockies pride ourselves on providing fun

family entertainment and suggesting inappropriate name changes will not be tolerated. Anyone who continues to suggest the G.J. Chops in any way will be blocked from our account. Which I believe they followed through on that threat.

Yeah, they did. they blocked a bunch of people i should note that the emphasis at the end of that sentence is mine there were no exclamation points at any point in this series of tweets and i just you know a long time ago in the beginning of twitter companies like didn't know you know brands didn't know how to use twitter and so they would have like an intern run their social media accounts. But running social media, doing that kind of marketing is a job. Professional people do it who have degrees and stuff and salaries. And well, I don't know if they always have salaries.

Hopefully. Hopefully. But it's a real job. And so sometimes when there are these kinds of snafus, people still fall back on the trip like, oh, that intern is having a bad day. And it's much funnier to think that, no, a professional marketing type person thought that they would earnestly tweet this and that it would solve and end the discussion. starting a discussion in which we all had to grapple with the reality of saying chubs multiple. You know, Ben, that first week back from vacation, it's such a long week. I've had like really intense time dilation this entire week.

I have not known what day it is or what time uh so i'm grateful for this in a way that is very sincere and is probably as earnest as the person who tweeted this yeah felt at the time i'm actually crying i wasn't even thinking of it as a person who tweeted this. I was just thinking of it as like the Grand Junction Rockies, just as a monolithic entity, like the team itself had been moved to tweet this. Like the literal Rocky Mountains had felt the need to pick up their phone. Just the earth itself just emanated from.

I will head off this Chubbs reference. So the backstory here, which was not at all clear from these tweets was that a gentleman named Ian, Ian Loomis I believe who was subsequently interviewed by Deadspin he had started an online petition change.org to have the name of

this team this is the rookie league pioneer league affiliate of the Rockies And he wanted them to change their name To an animal themed Wildlife themed name As so many minor league teams have And the humpback chub I am reading from the petition here

Is an endangered fish native to the Colorado River in the valley They've been working hard to reestablish The humpback chub. And so Ian thought it would be a nice way. He called it a local icon. The humpback chub would be a great way for the local baseball team to represent the Valley with a unique name and exciting logo and mascot. It would be a good mascot. He said the team could attract fans from across Colorado and the USA. I don't know how many fans would be coming from across the country to see the humpback chub mascot, but maybe.

So as far as I can tell, this petition, which as we speak is approaching 3,000 signees and has a target of 5,000 and may very well get there. But at the time that these tweets were tweeted, I think was in like the very low hundreds, if that. There was not like an enormous groundswell of support for the renamed the Grand Jun Rockies, the Chubbs movement. And so this is kind of your classic Streisand effect, sort of tweeting about the thing that you don't want anyone to think about and thereby causing everyone to think about it. So I don't know why they chose to address things in this forum, I guess. Maybe they figured, well, the only people following us are people who care about this local team, and maybe those people have seen this petition or even caused this petition,

and so we will speak directly to them by tweeting. But that's not really how Twitter works. Everyone can see the tweets. And to have this just plop down in the middle of the timeline, this bold resolution not to be named the Chubs and the rationale for not naming the team the Chubs was just wonderful and may never be duplicated this was like the embodiment of the sir this is an arby's or like you know everyone says nothing and then someone else says the thing kind of meme this was the perfect illustration of that man what a gift i thought i thought that the worst i thought that the worst minor league promo name we would get was the very real, the Timber Rattlers decided, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers,

who are an affiliate of the Brewers, I believe, were the utter tuggers for a promo night, which started with a beach towel giveaway, which I got to tell you, as a person who lived in Wisconsin, don't quite know why that was the giveaway. I don't know about that. I mean, that seems strange. But I thought that that would be it. But then there was this.

The Timber Rattlers are in appleton they're not on they're not even on one of the great lakes are they i don't know anyway no they are a special moment they are on lake winnebago or close to it but anyhow wow it was pretty magical. It also inspired in me a desire to check the board at Fangraphs.com to see if there were any prospects on the Grand Junction Rockies who could be used in a really bad package joke, but they're not quite there yet. They need to be better prospects. Although low-egg, you know, rookie guys get thrown in all the time, I suppose.

Anyhow, what a magical thing. It was. It was great. And the team has deleted the tweets, but they're tweeting through it. They tweeted their lineup for the day not half an hour ago. And they have more than 7, followers now which i'm guessing was not the case a day ago so uh everyone has followed just to see if if lightning strikes twice and yeah and another pronouncement ever issues from at gj rockies let's hope it does but i don't think

that can ever be replicated i wonder if they went back and unblocked anyone. Probably not. Wonderful day, except for some of the other days. Yeah, we don't get them often, but man, we got to revel in them when we do. Even when we have to say Chubbs on our podcast. My dad listens to this podcast sometimes. My dad listens to this on occasion. I mean, they had a good point. You know, you probably wouldn't want your name to be named Chubbs. And if you're

part of the Rocky system and you want to proudly represent the Rockies as their Twitter bio says, then I understand it. But there were better ways to politely decline this suggestion. They would have sold so many hats though. That's true.

I buy a lot of really bad hats. Some of them are actually good, but they sit right on the edge of good taste. And these ones, I think, are actually good. I bought a Hickory Crawdad's Hickory Llama's hat the other day. And I don't know what you would put on Chubb's hat. But I would have bought one. I would have bought that hat. I think you'd put local icon Humpback Chubb on there, of course.

Can you imagine if they had done a mascot i like that deadspin asked uh ian what his favorite thing about the humpback chub was and he said my favorite thing about the humpback chub is of course it's immense hump of course what else would it be can you imagine like an anthropomorphized humpback chub? That's probably the best case scenario for what it would look like. So yeah, I do not buy a lot of team merchandise. I don't really wear hats and such. But if someone were to make, and I'd be surprised if someone hasn't made by this point,

some bootleg mock-up version of a Grand Junction Humpback Chubbs memorabilia, I would certainly buy that merchandise. So please send me a link and I will purchase your product. So a couple non-Chubbs related things that I wanted to penter about briefly. I don't know whether you saw the story in the Orange County Register, former home of Sam Miller, by Jeff Fletcher about the angels and their outfield fences. So the angels have moved a fence sign for Pechanga Resort Casino, which had encroached on the center field area. So it's out there right in dead center center And it had kind of crept from Right center toward center so it was Almost dead center and The Angels analytics department

Noticed something which you can see In the splits tool in Fangrass which is That right handed hitters have Had a very hard time hitting Against left handed pitchers At Angel Stadium which is odd There's been a significant reverse split, not just for the Angels hitters, but for all right-handed hitters in Angel Stadium, at least for the past few years.

And this sign has been where it was in center since 2015. And digging into this and running the numbers, and it says they were looking into this for months, which I don't know how it would possibly take months to look at this but uh all right and uh yeah so uh billy epler is quoted in the story he says we started to notice a signal with the left-handers more than just randomness there was some kind of signal that kept showing up on left-handers that had certain release heights we researched those heights and we came down to the field and got the optics on it. We thought there might be a contributing factor with one of the signs. So Epler talked to the club president about this and he said,

no problem, we can move the sign. So when the Angels just came back for their homestand on Tuesday, the sign was shifted the farthest to the right it has been in several seasons. And I talked to someone in the Angels front office about it, and he said, this is not something that the players have complained about. They have not said it interferes with their line of sight. But when they were down on the field, it seemed to them that there was some possibility, the front office that is, that this could have been a distraction. And they were just kind of looking for anything that might reverse this odd trend. And they figured we can't really lose anything by moving the sign over.

But I love the idea that for the past, you know, five seasons of excellence, Mike Trout has actually been hamstrung by the Pechanga Resort Casino sign. And that now he will be even better than he was because Mike Trout has had a significant reverse split at home over those years, I think actually prior to those years too, so I guess that sort of screws up the narrative. But still, he and Justin Upton and Albert Pujols and, you know, Kinsler and Krohn, guys who've been there before, there's been this trend, and I love the idea that Mike Trout might actually be better than we thought because he hasn't been able to see balls coming out of the hands of left-handers of a certain height for the past several years because of a resort and casino sign. So now we will just sit

back and wait and see whether Mike Trout will be even better at baseball. When I read this, because I think someone was kind enough to tweet this at us knowing that this is exactly the sort of weird affair that we like the best. And when I read this story, my first thought was that I was very angry that I had not thought of it as a Mike Trout hypothetical article to write. Because that feels like some very Meg business. Because that feels like some very Meg business. I have noticed, not so much with their outfield signage, but just in the signage that you can see near home plate, and I will actually not waste my time trying to figure out if this is true,

but it feels true, that they have a lot more, the Angels seem to have a significant degree more of local advertising and sort of prominent places in their ballpark than some other teams do. And I don't know if that sense is accurate or not, but that's how it feels. And so, which I don't know, I kind of like it when ballparks don't just have like the, you know, Jimmy John's or whatever. Advertising is yucky no matter what. Sorry, advertisers. But it feels a little less corporate when it's like, you know, the like tile store nearby. But I do like very much the idea that this would have been messing with them for so long. I think it's great. It seems like the kind of thing that I don't know.

It could be true. You never know what's distracting to people, I guess. I mean, we have rules about the color of glove that pitchers can use and, you know, what they can have on their shoes. And some of that stuff is silly, but some of it's probably rooted in a belief that, you know, certain things are legitimately distracting. So it seems like it could be true. I'm excited to find out. It's funny. The contemporary advertising looks sort of tacky. Funny, the contemporary advertising looks sort of tacky.

But when you look back at old school ballparks and you see like advertisements for brands that no longer exist, and then it's kind of quaint and nice. Like the, I don't know, like the big Schaefer beer sign at Ebbets Field or something. It just looks very much of its era. And it looks, oh, this is from the 40s or the 50s or the Yankees and Ballantyne blasts and the Ballantyne logos. I know Schaefer and Ballantyne still exist in some form, so maybe that's not the best example. But aesthetically speaking, it still looks and sounds old in a way that adds some romance to it, even if there wasn't any at the time. But I like looking at those old outfield signs, but it's not quite as charming when it's something that you can actually go out and buy right now.

But anyway, I think this is a fun story. I don't actually believe that this was making Mike Trout worse and that he will be better now. But I like the idea. I want to believe that that could be the case because I want Mike Trout to be better all the time. So one other thing that we should probably mention is that there is a new big leaguer and it's sort of an exciting one brendan mckay was called up to start for the race on saturday and of course he is a two-way player so we've got another two-way player in baseball he's more of a pitcher certainly than a hitter he is he's not the full-fledged otani type two-way but he has been hitting regularly he plays first base he started off the season not hitting well at allway but he has been hitting regularly he plays first base he started off this season not hitting well at all but then he had been hitting very well in a small sample in

triple a so he's probably not someone who would ever be a full-time hitter especially as a first baseman but he is someone who could be a kishnick type or you know a Micah Owings type except better at pitching than them so except actually good at pitching right so he's like you know a top 10-ish prospect I think he was 11th the the fame graphs guys yeah after the draft so yeah Eric and Kylie moved him up to 11 from 14 yeah so really good pitcher the Rays some help. Tyler Glasnow is shut down for the moment. And of course, every win counts for them. And so he will be shoring up the back of that rotation. And I don't know if they'll have him doing some weird Razy type usage or whether he'll just be starting, but there's definitely potential for pinch hitting appearances at least, or I don't know if he'd ever get a start as a position player at this point, but I think his arm will be much needed. And if he does end up like rotating over to first base or like the Rays have their pitchers do from time to time, then that will be much more natural for him than for anyone else. Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, Craig wrote about McKay

coming up for us at Fanagraphs today and a thing that he he pointed out which I think is true is that you know he has not thrown a ton of innings this year and he you know they will likely given some of his injury history be very careful with how they manage his inning so it's just exciting to have the two-way potential because it gives you another another aspect of the game where you might get to see him more and it's always fun to see good top prospects coming up and to know that there's a way that they can contribute to the roster that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to worry about their arms being overtaxed so i'm excited yeah it'll be fun yeah and i don't know if we can call the two-way thing a trend at this point i mean there's otani there's mck, there's Jared Walsh, there's some guys in the

minors, I guess. It's not like sweeping the nation, but it's happening here and there at least, which is more than we had had for a while before Otani in any serious way. So I hope that this catches on, that these mold breakers make it a little easier for people to come up. And even if it's not the full Otani, and we'll see whether Otani is the full Otani, but even if McKay just kind of hits every now and then better than the typical pitcher and does something unorthodox from time to time, that would be nice and add some variety.

I'm not sure how committed to it he is, the way that Otani seems dead set on being a two-way player. I'm not sure whether mckay is equally committed but i think like he pushed to do it and wanted to continue doing it when it would have been easier not to so clearly he prefers to do that if he can yeah and i think you know it just provides additional incentive for the race to make it all the way to the world series where you know a guy like him, even more useful, can leave it in for a little while. Don't have to worry about your roster quite as much.

Go in World Series, Jeff. Yeah. Get on that. Exciting prospect promotion, although I would like to see Riley O'Brien, grandson of Johnny O'Brien, make that jump sometime soon. He was, Jeff alerted me when he was promoted to AA

and he has done pretty well there as a starter thus far. So there's some hope for Riley, but Brendan McKay for now. So that is fun. And one other not so fun thing that I wanted to mention is the decline and fall of Yonder Alonzo, which I find fascinating in sort of a sad way. But Alonzo, for those who were not following him a couple seasons ago, was this breakout player in 2017, had been a top prospect and And of course, 2017 was a high home run year, but it wasn't just that. He changed his approach and he got into the swing planes and the launch angles and the numbers and all of that. And he made himself into a fly ball guy. And I think it was Dave Cameron even called him like the new poster boy for the fly ball revolution in a post at FanGraphs. And he had a really great great season he went up from an 87 weighted runs created plus in 2016 to 133 in 2017 with the a's and with the mariners mostly

with the a's then things fell apart and i'm still trying to figure out exactly what happened there so he went to cleveland he was with cleveland last year and he sort of regressed almost all the way back to what he had been before and he was a 97 wrc plus guy last year and then the white socks signed him this winter perhaps or traded for him as it seemed like maybe the the recruiting company for manny machado and he managed only a 56 WRC plus and 251 plate appearances and he just got DFA'd and it's this weird thing and I actually mentioned him in the book because in the MVP machine there's a chapter about when it doesn't work when you you change things and you're not able to get great or you benefit but then you're not able to sustain it for whatever reason.

And Alonso was sort of that case where he clearly unlocked something and it worked for a season and then it stopped working. And this year it really stopped working. And not only was his performance down, but he went back to being a ground ball guy again. His ground ball rate was back to what it had been before fly ball revolution found him. So it's odd because you don't know, did he change? Was he just unable to keep doing what he had been doing? Or did pitchers adjust and say, okay, we see what you did.

Now we're going to do this thing. And then he wasn't able to match that or what? You never know. But it just goes to show that even if you do become a player development success story, that doesn't mean that it will end happily, that you will maybe the the home run totals would go away because he hadn't been a power hitter before he still managed to thump the ball and then yeah you know the the power declined even further this year in this baseball environment in this offensive environment you know his isos down and yeah and whatnot so i just it's a very it's just a very odd bit of business i mean he is he is running a quite low babbit for him but in a way that i mean the rest of the offensive profile doesn't point to that as the culprit here right you can't just look at him and say that he's getting unlucky

his peripheral stats don't suggest that so it's too bad but you know uh in some ways i guess he got a couple months worth of work because he was related to someone. So that's a nice little present that Manny Machado gave to Yondra Alonso, even if it didn't work out long term. Yeah, his plate discipline hasn't fallen apart or anything. It doesn't seem like it's odd. But, yeah, launch angle's down. Exit speed's down from 2017. All the expected stats are down.

So you just, you never know. I'd be interested to read something that he explains it to the best that he can or even talk to him about it. Because you never know if there's, I mean, there could be injuries, there could be off the field issues, there could be, you never know what it could be. So there are many possible explanations. But just as a reminder, I suppose that baseball's hard and even if you figure it out for a year, that doesn't mean it will stay figured out. Yeah. Can I do a little bit of promoting on this, your podcast for a fan graphs event, and then we can get to our interviews.

I would just like to share with everyone, and you've probably seen this on the site and on Twitter, but we still have some tickets available for our event in Cleveland on July 6th, and we have announced our panels. So your lovely co-author, Travis Soschek, is going to join Dan Zimborski and Craig Edwards on a major league panel, and then Eric and Kylie will be joined by Jake and Jordan of Susswit's Family Barbecue for a prospect major league panel. And then Eric and Kylie will be joined by Jake and Jordan of Cespedes Family Barbecue for a prospect focus panel. I will moderate both of those and try to make sure that no one says anything so goofy that we lose our jobs. I will do my best, but I make no promises. The details for that can be found at Fangraphs. We'll link to it in the post for this here podcast. Tickets are $15, but they are free if you are a Fangraphs member.

So check it out. We hope to see people. It should be fun. We are doing it at a place that does not only serve beer, unlike prior years where we've only ever really gone to breweries. So if you want to have a gin drink or even just a Diet Coke while you're watching us talk about baseball, you should come and do that if you're watching us talk about baseball, you should come and do that if you're going to be in the Cleveland area on Saturday, July 6th. So we hope to see folks there.

Yeah, I'll link to the page for that with all the info. And we can probably talk a little bit more about the All-Star game and All-Stars next week, I guess. Sure. Yeah, my interest in, you know, who is an all-star is kind of at an all-time low, but I mean, it's nice for the players saw that Devin Fink just wrote something for Fangraphs about the all-star starters by war. And I think he said that around 60% of the war leaders at their respective positions are all-star starters, which is good, I guess. But as he said, it's hard to say exactly what good is or what it should be.

you said it's hard to say exactly what good is or what it should be so yeah and i think you know the nice thing is that the people who weren't the guys who aren't uh starting seem very likely to be named to the team my my take on i think all-star selections matter a lot to players and so i think that they're important in that respect but mostly you just get excited for guys like it's pretty i think it's pretty cool that hunter pence is an all-star and that like that definitely you know he's not the war leader at dh but like that makes a certain amount of sense that is not an embarrassing selection by any means uh no offense to austin meadows you know it's pretty cool to tell martez the starting second baseman for the national league tell marty yep tell Quetel Marte almost has four wins.

My stars. Man, somebody should hire that Jeff guy. Yeah. I know you already made this joke while I was gone. I listen to all the podcasts on my flights, so I'm mostly caught up. I know we already talked about that with Sam. We don't have to belabor the point,

but anyhow, yeah, all-stars. Yeah, so it feels like we used to write, like, who's the all-star snubs? Yeah. Snubs, and now we don't talk so much the all-star snubs? Yeah. Snubs. And now we don't talk so much about the snubs. We talk about the chubs. Maybe it's because just everyone is an all-star at this point.

Because by the time you get the reserves and the injury replacements and the guys who just don't want to go and then the fill-ins for them, it's like almost everyone who could conceivably be an all-star either is one or has a chance to be one so i guess you could get mad about like xander bogarts or joey gallo or someone not starting the game but they'll be there if they want to be there yeah i don't know that there are many things i respect more than guys saying no i'm not going being named to the team and being like i'm gonna take vacation i'm tired i i i respect grown-ups who admit that they're tired because we're all tired yeah yeah it's i mean if i were a baseball player and i were voted onto the team by the fans i think i would feel obligated to go and and if it were like my first time i'm sure i'd be giddy about it but if

it were like my 10th time then i guess i'd still be pleased but i don't know that i would be enthused about going wherever instead of taking a few days off to see my friends and family and sleep so i think it would depend a lot on where it was uh no offense to the the very fine people of cleveland but i don't know next year well i guess next year mike trout won't have to go anywhere because the all-star game next year is in los angeles so yeah hopefully he'll make it now that the sign is moved to the right man what if it unlocks like two wins it won't at all i understand i know it won't but what if it does what if the sign being where it was was the only thing helping him the whole time?

It was actually secretly somehow. That won't happen. Anyway, I think 60% of war leaders making it, that sounds about right to me. Because sometimes you don't want the war leader. Because A, war is based on half a season of defense. And even though that's regressed at Fangraphs, it can still be a bit wonky at times and and it's the all-star game and you want stars and it's an exhibition and you want the people that the fans want to see that's the whole point of the game so almost it's a tautology i guess it's like by definition the fans voted in the people they want to see and so they get to go

and that's good and sometimes you want like a star who's not leading his position in war. Maybe you probably don't want someone who's having a Jose Ramirez season, but you probably, you know, you want to factor in the track record and the stature within the game and past accomplishments. And so I think that's a good thing. Yeah, you can understand why Gary Sanchez, as Devin noted, might be a more appealing starter than James McCann. Like, sorry, James, but you'll probably be there, so it'll be fine. You still get to go.

You're still going to have the little asterisk or whatever on your baseball reference page, so it's going to work out fine. Yeah, and I saw that Tommy Pham was upset, and he was talking about how there's a small market, large market bias built into the process, which is true to an extent. I mean, of course, there are more people in certain cities and they vote for their players. And that's always been the case. But there's still a lot of small market team players who make the game. And then I guess J.D. Martinez was kind of miffed, although maybe he was more miffed about the MVP voting last year because he had a whole thing about, you know, he was, what, fourth in MVP voting.

And he was saying that writers are voting for other people than J.D. Martinez because he's a DH. They're never going to work for front offices and therefore they are afraid to go against war, I guess was the idea, and vote for someone who is not the war leader because that will make them look like they're not sabermetric and therefore a team will not hire them was the hypothesis, which is a bit of a leap, I think. There's a kernel of truth there in that there are writers who would like to work for front offices. And when I started writing, that was bit of a leap, I think. There's a kernel of truth there in that there are writers who would like to work for front offices. And when I started writing, that was kind of a goal. So that was true at a time for me is not true now and is not true of most writers.

And even if it were true, I don't know that anyone is hiring or not hiring a writer because of their all-star votes or because they didn't vote down the ticket with all war leaders at the top so that seems like a stretch i mean is jd martinez saying he's he's better than mookie betts because that's the awkward that was the part of that whole thing that i found so awkward i was like you know that like mookie can hear you. Yeah. Yeah, that was, I don't know. I think it's, I doubt strongly that he was thinking about it in exactly these terms. But I mean, I think that there, there probably is a conversation that is useful for us to have on a fairly regular basis about whether the, you know, positional adjustments that we make within war are sort of reflective

of what they should be and to think about those and engage with them. I don't know that that's quite what J.D. Martinez meant when he made those comments, but you know, there's some, there's something to be said for that, but I don't know. I don't think most people who write, let me rephrase this. I don't think that most people who write and have an MVP vote have aspirations to work in the front office. I think that there are, you know, a lot of writers who would like to work for a team someday, but many of them, especially given how quickly they get hired these days, they don't make it to the point that they're in the BBWA, you goof. Yeah, right.

I forget whether Dave and Jeff ever had MVP votes. I know they had votes, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't know. I don't recall. Neither of them, to my knowledge, wanted to work for a team or thought they ever would work for a team before a team kind of came to them and offered a better offer than they had expected to get. So anyway, I just... We tried really hard. Yeah. Anyway.

We tried really hard. Yeah. It's a far-fetched idea, I think, that anyone was voting for J.D. Martinez or not because of how it would look to a potential future employer. Yeah. If anything, I think there are probably more writers who are incentivized to go against the grain and do something wacky so that they can get a column out of it and make everyone mad and get good traffic because they voted for player X. If you had not to relitigate the 2018 AL MVP award voting, which was fine, but I think if you had voted for Martinez on the grounds that he was valuable off the field in the sense that his presence, as I wrote in the book and Travis wrote, seemed to really materially benefit other Red Sox hitters, whether it was Betts or Bogarts or Bradley or other guys that he imparted some knowledge to.

And I've heard debates about whether that should count toward his value. And maybe the MVP is just for on-field value, but that isn't even a clean distinction because it was on-field value. If he made those guys better and they were more valuable, then that value is somewhat attributable to him. So if you had made that case that I think he made the Red Sox a lot better over and above his own excellent performance, then I would not have condemned you or not hired you if I were a front office person looking to hire you. So that would have been reasonable, I think, but I still would have voted for Mookie. Yeah, I guess we can forgive J.D. Martinez for not having a perfect understanding of the incentives that drive writers, because that's not his job, and our job is weird, and we tend to be weirdos who do it, so it's fine. Yeah, we probably get a lot of stuff wrong when we talk about his job. So tables turned for once.

All right. So we have bantered longer than I imagined that we would, but we just had a lot of chumps talk to get to. Please don't edit any of the laughing out. Definitely not. All right. So we will be back in just a moment with Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight to talk about the congressional baseball game and then the excellent Linda Holmes to talk about her debut novel, Evie Drake Starts Over. Our father, there's a lake I know I'll lift your face

Screw your curse to the sticky plate I can go Take a break and get away Run away with us through the summer Let's go upstate where we can stay You can always stay with our father If you take your time You'll make your mark So our first guest, Nathaniel Rakich, has been covering the Democratic presidential debates this week.

But I think that's probably taken, I don't know if you'd say a backseat, but at least a seat alongside. Another political story from this week that he covered, and that is the congressional baseball game. This year, the Democrats beat the Republicans 14 to 7. They've won 10 out of the last 11 congressional baseball games. But Nathaniel has approached the stats from recent seasons from a sabermetric perspective, and he has quantified which Congress people are the best at baseball. He's been looking into this for a while now, and we figured it was about time to have him come on and tell us about the advanced stats perspective on the CBG. So Nathaniel, welcome to the show. Thanks, Ben. It's an honor and a pleasure. So for those who don't know,

perhaps it's self-explanatory, but can you tell us a little bit about what the Congressional Baseball Game is and what its history is? Absolutely. So the Congressional Baseball Game is a baseball game between members of Congress themselves. It pits a Democratic team against a Republican team, and it's an event for charity. It raises millions of dollars every year, but they take it very seriously as well. They play at Nationals Park. That's primetime game, 7.05 first pitch. They play with its regulation baseballs.

This isn't just a softball game. They throw overhand. The Democratic pitcher, who I'm sure we'll talk about more, has been clocked at 80 miles per hour. So it's not a joke. It's also been going on for over 100 years. The very first game was in 1909, when John Tenner, who was briefly a pitcher for the then Chicago White Stockings,

now the Cubs, he became the first major league baseball player elected to Congress. And basically, he decided, hey, let's throw the ball around with some of my new friends. And what first inspired you to, apart from just a fascination with data, what first inspired you to go through and actually calculate advanced stats for these guys and gals, I should say? Well, Meg, I think the answer to that is because I am a gigantic nerd. Oh, you're in good company then. I hope so. Well, you know. You cover baseball and politics for Five48. This is the most natural thing you could have done. Yeah, I think that's the serious answer. I'm mostly a politics guy on my day job, but I'm lucky enough to work for a place that

also covers sports and specifically baseball. But yeah, I mean, the two interests of my life have always been baseball and politics. I'm a statsy guy, obviously. And a couple of years ago, or actually several years ago, I discovered the Congressional Baseball Game and it became a significant interest of mine. And then a few years ago was when I realized that they were keeping box scores of these. They do a great job, obviously, putting on this event for charity, but then there are also some almost equivalently baseball nerds there who talked to me about some anecdotes from the past games, shared with me all these stats they have had from previous games. and the transparency with which they provide their stats and the formulas for them, I decided to create this gigantic spreadsheet that put the hits and strikeouts and things like that, the raw elements of the box score, and to translate them into things like wins above replacement. I can't say that this is what we had in mind when we made all of that open to the public, but I'm glad that it found a use apart from major league and minor league baseball.

I'm curious, we'll get into some of the specifics of the players, like you said. Some of them merit more consideration maybe than others, but I'm curious if you've ever had the opportunity to attend one of these and what your observations not only of how the players play, but whether any sabermetric concepts have maybe made their way onto the congressional playing field or if they keep things pretty old school? Do we see a lot of bunting, sacrifice bunting at the congressional baseball game? It's funny that you asked that because usually I would say no, but there actually there was at least one bunt this year. I noticed when I was watching on C-SPAN, I had to, as Ben

alluded to, I had to double screen it with the Democratic debate. Sure. Yes, I've been to several of the games. I first when I first kind of discovered it was back in 2013 when I was living in Washington and I no longer live in Washington, but I try to go back every year. And of course, regrettably this year, I wasn't able to attend in person, but no, I would say that it's still a pretty laid back thing. I don't think a lot of people were thinking about, you know, kind of trying to find a competitive advantage or inefficiencies in the game, at least until I came around. And it has been fun because sometimes you'll see some of the players, like, for example, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy a couple of years ago found my spreadsheet and tweeted

about his stats, which were not super impressive at the time. He's actually had a couple of good games in a row now, but he kind of self-effacingly tweeted about his baseball skills, which was kind of fun. But no, it's still, I think, a very informal, they take an informal approach. Well, I guess that's not really true. They take it seriously in that they practice for months beforehand, but the games themselves, there's clearly, you know, they're having fun out there on the field. They take kind of a laissez-faire attitude toward substitutions, for example. You'll often see somebody taken out as a defensive replacement

or something like that, and then they magically come back in when it's their next turn to come to the plate. So yeah, it's not major league quality in either quality of play or strategy. And even in these hyper-polarized times, is this mostly a good-natured game? And I would imagine that the violence from a couple of years ago maybe brought people together around this event. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you brought that up. Obviously, a couple of years ago, there was the shooting at a Republican practice the day before the game. And that certainly, I think, I think it was always a very bipartisan thing. As we know, Washington is very polarized these days, and parties are getting kind of on the more and more extreme ends on both sides.

And it's also kind of been this several decades-long trend where you used to have Congress members staying in Washington during the, like, whenever the Congress was in session and over the weekends and things like that. So, like, it they could really there was a chance for them to spend time together, they would go golfing together and things like that. These days, people tend to go home every weekend to campaign or hold events. And so a lot of that gets lost. And really, the congressional baseball game is one of the few social events that lawmakers do still do together. And I think it's good both across the aisle. And also, I think maybe even more so for building relationships within parties, because I think it's good both across the aisle and also I think maybe even more so for building relationships within parties, because I think a lot of how things get did. You highlighted in particular Anthony Gonzalez, who's a Republican, and then Colin Aldred, who's a Democrat.

How did the rookies measure up in this year's contest? Yeah, they were both very impressive. So both of them are actually former NFL players, albeit briefly, before they got elected to Congress. And I will say that they have not released the official box score yet for this year's game. It's still in conference committee, if you will. But I was keeping score as best I could on the C-SPAN broadcast.

And Gonzalez went three for four with an RBI and a run scored. And then Allred went two for four with two doubles. So he showed a lot of power. And then one of his outs was a pretty long fly ball to center field. So I think he's going to have a good career in this game. so he showed a lot of power and then one of his outs was a pretty long fly ball to center field so um he i think he he's gonna have a good career in this game so this was a 14-7 game on wednesday pretty high scoring is that par for the course what's the typical run environment of the congressional baseball game oh yes it's uh it's definitely par for the course it's a very high

scoring run environment. I will, here, let me pull up some examples for you. Last year's game was 21 to five Democrats. It's a little bit misleading, of course, because the Democratic pitcher, who's the best player in the game, Cedric Richmond of Louisiana. Yes, talk about him.

He's very good. And the Republican pitchers are very bad. So you have this lopsided run environment where Democrats always score a ton of runs, but Republicans are maybe a little bit in the middle. This is actually one of their better performances in recent years. So for example, I've got the recent games in front of me now. So last year was 21 to 5 Democrats. Before that, it was 11 to 2 Democrats. You had a 22 to nothing Democratic victory in 2013. So yeah, it can be pretty lopsided. Another good example is that one of the Republican pitchers, Mark Walker, who lives up to his name based on his control, but he has a 646 ERA. But in terms of ERA minus, that's actually only 104, so about average.

So that gives you an idea of the scale that we're measuring against. Okay, so let's talk about Richmond, who was the MVP of this year's game and seemingly every year's game. So he's played in eight previous games, and you calculated that he was worth two and a half wins above replacement in those games, which is your standard 50 war pace over a 162 game season. So as you write in your piece about Richmond, in other words, Richmond is like Mike Trout combined with Max Scherzer if Scherzer pitched every single game. So tell us about Richmond, his background, and I suppose about his politics, although it seems like he's more of a baseball star than a political star, perhaps. Yeah, well, he's actually kind of both. So he's a fairly prominent Democrat in the House. He's been around, I believe, since 2011 was when he

was first elected. But he's now the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, which of course is a fairly powerful group. He's been a fairly high profile surrogate for Joe Biden's presidential campaign, for example. But yes, on the baseball diamond, it's certainly where I first became aware of him. He is a former baseball star at Morehouse College. So he does kind of come by these skills honestly. And as you mentioned, he's now played in nine games. He has been the starting pitcher in all nine. He has completed eight of those games, although I should mention that congressional baseball games are only seven innings long and not nine. So it's slightly less impressive, but still. Going into this year's game, he had a.220 ERA, and he had struck out

more than a quarter of the batters that he faced. And as you mentioned, on the pitching side, he has accrued 1.8 wins above replacement, and then he accrued an additional 0.7 on the hitting side for a total of two and a half. And yeah, and his hitting is also completely off the charts. Again, going into this year's game, he had a 6. with a 758 obp and a 1.087 slugging percentage um so some pretty crazy numbers he hit a home run yes he's the only person to hit a home run yes exactly um that's one thing is that he the home runs are extremely rare in this game as you can imagine playing in a major league field not a lot of players have the power to lift it over the fence unfortunately richmond's home run was an inside the park home run.

But I will say that in his very first game, I believe he hit a triple off of the wall. So he came very close to an honest to goodness home run. You mentioned that he was a pitcher at Morehouse. The impressive rookies this year were former NFL players without overanalyzing a bit of silliness too much. Do you think that the sort of carrying tools for the congressional baseball game are just former athletes

or are there any players who show particular aptitude for speed or defense, what have you? Yeah, that's a good question. I think athleticism is a big part of it, especially on the defensive side. The defense is, shall we say, not very clean. Although it's better than you would think it is when you're talking about a bunch of,

you know, 50, 60 something, you know, people on a major league baseball field with 90 feet between the bases. But I will say that they do maybe one sort of sabermetric innovation that they've had is that each team kind of has these designated pinch runners. And because of the quote unquote rule or lack thereof that I mentioned earlier, where they'll often substitute in a pinch runner or a defensive replacement, and then go back to the original batsman when they come up, you'll often see someone like Eric Swalwell for the Democrats, who's actually one of the kind of lower tier presidential candidates, if you recognize that name. But he has been one of Democrats' speed demons, basically. He's got,

I think, nine stolen bases in just five games because he comes into pinch run fairly often. For the Republicans, that player is probably Chuck Fleischman of Tennessee. He's got five stolen bases and has been caught stealing zero times. So they definitely have certain players who are put into roles, kind of the Terrence Gore of Congress, if you will. So Richmond has been representing Louisiana's second congressional district since 2011. So he is now 45 years old. I think the average congressperson is about 60, a little older in the Senate than the House. But I would assume that the game skews younger. Are there any notably senior members of the team who have excelled or continued to play?

Yeah, it definitely skews younger. So Richmond, as you mentioned, is in his 40s and he was in his 30s when he started out. So I think Richmond is starting to show his age a little bit. For example, he issued six walks in this year's game. So he also throws, I think, more than 100 pitches in each game, despite the fact that it's only seven innings. So I remember last year, actually, he had a quote afterward that was like, basically, man, I'm getting too old for this, which I think scared some Democrats to think, oh, man, like, are we gonna have to find a pitcher soon? But I would say that the most impressive member in terms of age is Kevin

Brady on the Republican side. He is, I believe, 63 years old now, and he's been playing in the game ever since he was first elected in 1997. So for more than 20 years, and he is still quite good. He is Republicans best player by war, although it's only 0.2 war, which kind of gives you an example of the disparity between Richmond and everybody else. But he is or at least he entered this year's game as a 400 hitter with an OVP of 516. And he actually got on base four times, I believe. Yes, he got on. He walked three times and was hit by a pitch once in this year's game. So that's only going to go up. I guess I hope the answer to this is no, but is there a trend of or a frequency of hit by pitches that we might attribute to some partisanship or do pitchers keep it pretty clean when it comes

to this game? That's a great question. No, there is not. The hit by pitches, they do happen, but it's very clear, I think, that it is a result of wildness and that there's no intent there. I will say a couple of years ago, I do think that the shooting, obviously it was awful, but had some nice side effects of bringing everybody together anew in a very partisan age. But I believe the year before the shooting was the year that the Democrats staged a sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives against

gun control. And that obviously meant that the day of the game was a very, tensions were high, basically. And there was one incident where basically one of the Republicans pulled a Chase Utley and took out the Democratic fielder on second base. But it's not like any punches were thrown or the benches cleared or anything, but that was kind of, I would say that's the one time in my, what, you know, six or seven years now following the game that I have noticed maybe some tension or frustration coming up. I was going to ask you whether there was any significance to the Democrats dominating this game lately, although I believe

all time it's tied now, right? Yeah, amazingly. And now that they've won 10 of 11, it's now the all time series is now 42 to 42 to one. And they did take several years off during things like World War Two and the Great Depression. Huh? Interesting. So FDR said, keep playing Major League Baseball, but we've got to stop the congressional baseball game. I was going to ask if there was anything to that the way that we always had that discussion about the AL and the NL when the AL was winning interleague play every year, but clearly it seems to just be Cedric Richmond has just completely destabilized the balance of power here by himself. Yes. Well, it's funny that you mentioned that actually, because the congressional

baseball game does actually tend to have these same patterns as the Ulster game does where one team will tend to dominate for a long time in a row. But it is, I think, because there is one player in particular who dominates. So for example, before Cedric Richmond, there was Steve Largent, who people might recognize because he is also a former NFL player, in fact, an NFL Hall of Famer. And he was in Congress between 1995 and 2001, I believe. And he was the Republican pitcher during that time. And he was almost as dominant as Richmond has been for the Democrats. And it's interesting because you mentioned in the piece that some ringers you'd think would just totally dominate didn't like i was wondering

what did jim bunning do in this game hall of fame pitcher yes and as you mentioned in your article he gave up seven runs in two innings in the game the year after he was elected to congress and maybe that was because he was no longer the pitcher he had been but also because his catcher was not a professional catcher and couldn't catch his curveball. So if you're too good, then I guess it could actually backfire in a way because you're playing with teammates who are not good enough to keep up with you. Yep, exactly. It's funny. The people who you expect would do the best, which are former professional baseball players, haven't always done the best. Tenor, who I mentioned, was the founder of the game back in 1909. He was not allowed to pitch

for probably understandable reasons. And so he had to play shortstop and his team lost, you know, probably as a result. But then I would say that the most successful former Major League Baseball player has been Vinegar Bend-Mizell in the game and he was in congress i believe in the 70s and he pitched for a couple of years and did pretty well although you know again it wasn't like he threw a no-hitter or anything like that which you might expect but yeah bunnings that was a that's one of the better stories i think from the the history of the game you mentioned chris murphy sort of took note of your advanced stats. Have there been any other reps who have noticed what you're doing and been receptive to it? Or is there an anti-war backlash among Congress, which I realize sounds like a joke, but I

actually didn't mean it. Right, right. No, I don't think that anybody has objected to the advanced stats. If anything, I think it's probably been helpful because people don't maybe understand it as much. think it's probably been helpful because uh people don't maybe understand it as much but i did notice uh that in advance of this year's game uh cedric richmond or at least his official twitter account did tweet out my article and said some good reading for today's game and i was like yeah you would think it was good reading wouldn't you but uh but yeah that's kind of been a concern

of mine maybe is that maybe some of the players who aren't as good would not be happy that you know the fact that they're hitting 250 or something is uh is being publicized but i try to to focus on the people who who are really excelling at the game like richmond you know when i write about it and things like that um and i certainly don't mean for it to be you know negative or to highlight anybody's uh of the game. I know that people are playing because they love the game and also for charity. And I think that's a great thing. And I hope that everybody takes it in the spirit for You mentioned Swalwell, but Tim Ryan's played in eight games, Inslee and Beto O'Rourke also. And so they were playing shorthanded and they still had no trouble. It seems when you have a Cedric Richmond, you're sort of set no matter what, I guess. So you mentioned that the game is co-ed and there were two women on the Democratic team this year, I think. I don't know about the other team.

Do you know when the game became co-ed and how much of a presence have women attended to play? Yeah, the game became co-ed in 1993 when three women all together kind of broke the gender barrier. And those were Ileana Rosletinen, Maria Cantwell, and then Blanche Lambert. Ileana Rosletinen, Maria Cantwell, and then Blanche Lambert. And the game since then has always had a couple of women, but it hasn't been anywhere near gender parity, obviously. Both teams have had women play for them. And in fact, both Ileana Rosletinen was a Republican, and the other two, Blanche Lambert and Maria Cantwell, were Democrats. So even from the beginning, it was bipartisan, the barrier breaking. But these days, it is just two Democrats or two Democratic women who play in the game, as you may have heard elsewhere, after the 2018 election, which decimated Republicans across the

board, but especially a lot of their more moderate female memberships. And now there are only 13 Republican women in Congress which of course means that there's a much smaller pool from the game and actually last year Mia Love was the only Republican woman on the roster and she's one of the people who lost her seat so yeah so as a result you just have Linda Sanchez and Nanette Diaz-Barragan as the two women who play the game but they're actually pretty good especially Sanchez who consistently comes in and pitch hits when they kind of in like the fourth or fifth inning when they do the second wave of substitutions or the first wave of substitutions rather. And she always seems to get a hit. She's hitting 444. She's got several RBI, five RBI. So she's actually one of Democrats'

best players. And how did they determine those substitutions? Is it based on talent or do they observe the committee structure and do it based on seniority? No, it's very all-star game-ish where they try to just give everybody one at bat or a couple of innings in the field. It was actually funny. There was a little bit of controversy about this a couple of years ago because the Republican roster is significantly bigger than the Democratic roster. So I would say that, you know, again, this is another place where the rules are not exactly strictly followed in terms of a 25-person roster. But Republicans, I want to say there are maybe 40 people on the roster at any given time. And

the old Republican manager got a lot of grumbling because the Republicans had lost to Democrats for several years in a row. And part of people's complaints were that they were trying to give everybody a chance. And literally one Republican member of Congress anonymously said to a reporter that it was, quote, socialist baseball. And that manager stopped, was ousted, and replaced with a new manager. Didn't help really very much, though. They still lose. So we'll link to your article, we'll link to the spreadsheet. You've got a wide array of stats in there for every player, and I assume you'll be updating this as soon as you get the box score for this year's game.

Are there any stats that you wish that you could calculate that you can't in particular i'm thinking this game was played in nationals park so let's turn on stat cast and let's get some sprint speeds and some jumps and some exit velocities give it all to me that would be pretty amazing i do think that there would be i think it would be very helpful to have like you know cedric rich Richmond's exit velocity versus I think maybe the median for a congressional hitter. But yeah, I think defensive stats. So the war that I calculate is entirely offensive or pitching. So I should have mentioned that caveat up front that there's no defensive component

because we obviously don't have those tracking stats. So that would be lovely to have. Another thing which is related, but not about the congressional baseball game specifically, is that it would be great to do the congressional women's softball game as well. So mentioning the kind of gender breakdown, a lot of the women, I think, don't play because there is this alternative for softball players. So people like Kirsten Gillibrand, a presidential candidate, of course, Debbie Wasserman Schultz,

the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, other people that you might know, they all play in the congressional women's softball game. And it would be great to get stats for that. I haven't been able to do that yet. I'm not sure. It's not nearly as formal of a thing, but maybe I can get that going forward. All right.

Well, we celebrate this work. I'm glad to see Sabermetrics applied to exhibition congressional baseball. You certainly have this beat to yourself, I think. I think that's fair to say you own the congressional baseball game Sabermetrics beat. Yes. So you've carved out a niche for yourself. I don't know if it's a lucrative one, but we appreciate that you put this work into the game and everyone should go check out the article and the stats.

You can also find Nathaniel on Twitter at BaseBallot and of course follow his political coverage and non-baseball coverage at FiveThirtyEight. So Nathaniel, thank you very much for coming on. Thank you guys so much. All right, stick with us through one more break and we'll be right back with NPR's Linda Holmes to talk about her debut novel, a work and all your softball trophies. Introduce me to your family.

You don't even have to get to know me. I'll make up the rest. All right, we are back. And we're delighted to be joined by Linda Holmes, the host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, a frequent voice on other NPR programs, and now a novelist. Her new book, Heavy Drake Starts Over, is out this week. Linda, congratulations and thanks for coming on. Oh, thank you so much. So these won't all be questions about baseball, I promise, but because this is a baseball podcast, let's begin with a baseball question. So at what point did Dean Tenney enter the picture? Did you start out

knowing this would be about Evie and then realize that a pitcher with the yips was what the story required? Or was that there from the get go? I had had the two ideas, the idea of Evie, who's a young widow who was not very happily married. That was one idea that I had. And then originally, I was thinking about writing something about maybe an athlete with an injury, and then I got fascinated by the Yips. And so they were at one point kind of two ideas that I was interested in. And it wasn't until, you know, I got a little bit more into the writing that I decided I would put them into the same story. And I think everyone who has encountered the Yips, who has read about the Yips, is fascinated by the Yips. And I wonder why you thought that would make him a good kind of co-protagonist or what about that struggle

might make him ripe for this sort of story and whether there was a particular player with the yips who maybe captured your attention yeah i think the first one that i was aware of or the first one that maybe i actually watched film of was mackie sasser and if you're not familiar with mackie sasser he's a catcher for the mets who lost the ability to throw back to the pitcher which is supposed to be the easy part of being a catcher. And I saw, I think I saw at some point some of the tape of him trying to throw back. And it's really, it's compelling because it's so awful. creative person, I was very interested in the idea that it's one of the, it's one of life's great terrors is the idea that you would wake up one day and be totally unable to do whatever it

is that you're both that you make your living by doing and that you're most proud of doing. And so, um, to me it was, it presented a great character moment because it requires such a difficult reset, I think, for a character in that situation. And so I found it fascinating and awful and therefore great fodder for fiction. So my wife, who once introduced herself to you at an event as the composer of the podcast's One Last Meaningless Thing song. Of course! Hello to your wife! Well, she's been fretting ever since about whether that was weird. Not at all. It was wonderful. You can tell from my voice. It is a very sweet, lovely memory.

She started reading the book after I finished it. And last night she asked me, are there real baseball players like Dean? You know, witty and cultured and sensitive. And I said, well, there's Brandon McCarthy. And I don't know whether it's because I've heard you and Brandon together on the podcast or because some of the other info lines up, but Dean was just Brandon McCarthy for me in my head as I was reading. You know, he's a tall right-hander, pitched for the Yankees, has a scar on his head where he got hit by a ball.

And I think Brandon even had a brief bout of the yips at one point. So am I on to something here or should I be the one worrying that something I said was weird now? No, this is actually a really funny story because for me, the athlete who kind of inspired a lot of Dean's personality when I was first writing the book, which I started in 2012, right? So this has been a while. The athlete who most inspired him originally was not a baseball player at all. It was Chris Cluey when he was a kicker for the Vikings. And it was at a time when he had kind of become this interesting, progressive, funny, nerdy gamer guy, which to me, a really, at that time, unusual personality for a professional athlete. And so I started thinking, you know, what if this person who had the yips had like that kind of personality where he rubbed certain kinds of sports media the

wrong way, things like that. But instead of being, you know, a solid kicker for the Vikings, he was an excellent pitcher for the Yankees, who then of course collapsed. So I didn't really particularly have a baseball player in mind. And then it was actually Alan Sepinwall, who said to me at one point, I said, kind of like Chris Cluey, when I was describing the book to him, and he said, or Brandon McCarthy. And at one point, I said, kind of like Chris Cluey, when I was describing the book to him, and he said, or Brandon McCarthy. And at the time, I only knew Brandon McCarthy from the fact that I knew he was really funny on Twitter. So it wasn't until later that I went on Joe's show and actually like talked to Brandon, and sort of restrained myself from saying, like, I have to tell you a

funny story about the guy who's the lead in this like, I have to tell you a funny story about the guy who's the lead in this book that I wrote. So you are definitely onto something. It's not what I was thinking, but it was the first thought that Alan had. Okay. I'm curious, because the kind of writing that Ben and I do is not of the fictional variety.

And so I'm always, you know, just a marvel of the imagination of people who end up being novelists. But I'm always, you know, just a marvel of the imagination of people who end up being novelists. But I'm curious how you were balancing the sort of very real baseball details that you have in the book, which, you know, were great. And as people who spend our time

thinking about baseball read very true to me. Oh, phew. I don't know that you needed our endorsement, but I think you have it. No, I need it. But I'm curious sort of how you went about thinking about weaving real baseball detail versus what you were going to fictionalize. Obviously, Dean is not a real person, but he does pitch for a real team.

And you reference players who are, as you've mentioned, real players who have had the yips and had to deal with that. And so I'm just curious how you went about thinking about weaving the fiction versus the nonfiction and where you thought it was important to have real details versus stuff that might be, you know, a product of your own imagination. Yeah, this everything that's in the book that I think this is correct. Everything that's in the book about the yips and players who have had the yips is true. Because partly because I think this is correct. Everything that's in the book about the Yips and players who have had the Yips is true. Because, partly because, I think people who have never kind of followed that phenomenon

in some ways find it hard to believe that that's real. And that it's real to that extent. So everything that's in the book about the Yips and players who have had the Yips, including Chuck Knobloch throwing the ball at Keith Olbermann's mother, which is my, not throwing at, but accidentally hitting Keith Olbermann's mother, which is my not throwing at but accidentally hitting his mother, which is my favorite story. So all that stuff is true. But then I really did want to be able to have Dean have a history in baseball and with other players and coaches and things like that, that was mostly invented. So everybody that he kind of knows and has played with and stuff like that, that's all

fiction. But all the Yips stuff is true. And at one point was much longer and way too long. There was a kind of ridiculous dissertation on the history of the Yips, which fortunately, that's what you have editors for. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of emotional turmoil in the book and difficult, traumatic conversations and characters going through very difficult times. And yet the vibe of the book, I think, as a reader is a very pleasant one. And I think that that whole atmosphere of Maine and cozy sweaters and wine and large empty houses very much made me want to live in that place. And I saw one of the facts about the book that you had tweeted was that one of the houses that you describe in the book is actually available for rent. And I would very much like to rent it.

So please tell me where it is. It's true. How did you end up with this setting? I vacationed for several summers in a row with my family in just exactly that area of Maine. The town is fictional, but it's based on towns in a real area of Maine. And we vacationed there probably from when I was about, I would guess like eight or nine until I was probably 13 or 14. And so, you know, for quite a few summers, we would spend a couple weeks up there. And then we went back when I was an adult. And when my sister's kids were little, we all went back and stayed in those same places.

So it's a place that's very, very near and dear to my heart. And I just had, I think when I went back there with my family, when I was older, I thought I would love to set a piece of fiction here someday, just because I love it. And because I love describing it. And because it's so it's, I think it's so special and interesting. And I, you know, I, and it's just, it's fondness, really. Were there versions of this? I mean, we'll provide some some light spoilers here. So if you don't want to know, you all should read the book. And if you don't want to know the the outcome of Dean's comeback, you should skip ahead a little bit. But were there ever iterations of the book where you were tempted to have his comeback

be successful? And I'm curious about the narrative choice to have him literally throw into the stands as he's trying to make his way back. No, it in fact, it was one of my fears when I was trying to sell the book that somebody would want to buy the book, but would insist that he had to have a successful comeback that ended with like a big game. So I think that the point, this whole point of the role that that plays in the story that's between him and Evie is really that you can't always fix everything. You can't always undo all the things that have happened to you that make you sad. That's true of her life. It's true of her marriage to her husband who has died. And it's true of his career. Sometimes you really do have to figure out a next phase that doesn't involve rescuing the previous phase or being able to go back to it. And so it was never really in my mind that he would return to all of his his glory, because I just don't think that would be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think the

idea also comes through that you can't fix someone else or that you won't be fixed when you meet someone and magically everything will be set right again. There's a scene where, you know, Dean says, did you think I was going to be fine now because we're sleeping together? And Evie says, no, of course not. But she's thinking, yes, that's what I was thinking. That's what I was hoping. Right. And I think a lot of people, maybe especially women, but probably a lot of people, you hope that you'll have some profound effect on another person. And sometimes that takes the form of, you know, what if it changes this person's life to be involved with me in some incredibly major and important way.

And I also think, you know, given the fact that the yips in real life, they don't really understand, they still don't really understand how they work. They still don't really understand how to cure them. They still end people's careers. And given those facts, I thought it would be very unfair to just kind of present this as something that he met the right person and boom, everything was fine. So maybe that's one trope of romantic comedies that you hoped to distort a little bit. Are there others that you wanted to either confirm because you like them and you think they work or that you wanted to topple somewhat? It was really important to me

that Evie have other things going on in her life besides just meeting someone and getting into a relationship. So to me, almost equally weighted with this potential romantic story is the story of her and her closest friend. And they've kind of become their friendship is being challenged by a lot of the change in her life and the change in his life. And I never find romantic comedies or love stories satisfying if you suddenly feel like this is the only thing these people are thinking about because life just never works that way. And it's not enough if it's like, also, they're thinking about trying to land the big advertising account at work. It has to be something substantive and emotional that's also, you know, difficult and challenging. So I did want to make sure that she had other

relationships in her life and actually that he did too, that he has parents and friends and his own past. I'm curious about the decision to, which I found very effective that the only people who really offered a perspective on her deceased husband, Tim, were people who were aligned with her, right? We never heard heard his parents perspective on her marriage um she's they're referenced of course and like we get a glimpse at the end that they're disappointed that she's managed to move on from their boy so quickly but i'm curious if that was an intentional narrative choice so that we were just sort of focused on her and her perspective or if we ever we ever thought to hear more from tim. I was glad that we didn't. I don't

know that we need to hear more from the Tims of the world. But yeah, I mean, I think it's really it's her story. And I think she I think there's enough of her kind of interior monologue, I guess, that if anybody is trying to give him a break in the story, in some ways it's her. It's her own memory. She's very hesitant to be. She doesn't want to be unfair to him. She knows she was about to leave him. So she obviously was dissatisfied, but she feels guilty about all of that.

And I just didn't think it was necessary for him to have an advocate. I thought it was enough to acknowledge that he's loved by his parents. And that's valid. Like, it's not a terrible thing that his mother still loved him, even though he was a terrible husband. That's his mother's reality. And one of the things Evie has to figure out is, you know, what do I want to tell people people it's sure her own father still really loved her husband when he died and and so she has to figure out like how much do i need to reveal to people and how much do i just let them live with their own memory of someone and there are a lot of individual love stories within the overarching story of evie and dean there's the father daughter love story and

and the best friend love story. Was there one of those that gave you particular pleasure to write? I think the romantic love story is sort of the most familiar to me as an idealized version of something I love to read. I do think that friendship stories sometimes suffer from being not complicated enough in fiction. I think in a lot of books where you have a central romantic story, the friendship story will only really exist relative to the romantic story. It'll be, are you supporting my love life or whatever. And you'll also have usually a somewhat narrow selection of who that best friend will be. So you'll have a best friend who's either

another if it's a if it's a woman's story, you'll have a best friend who's like another single woman who's always talking about her, her, you know, I'm trying to get a date and all that stuff. always talking about her, you know, I'm trying to get a date and all that stuff. Or you'll have the gay best friend. I think that's established. And so I did want to write, as much as I love a gay best friend and a single woman best friend, I have some of both. I wanted to write a different kind of friendship. So it meant a lot to me to write a platonic straight dude, straight woman friendship,

because I have many in my own life. I'm sure that it wouldn't focus around the yips, but are there other sports stories that you would be interested in pursuing either in novel form or nonfiction? I mean, this is clearly focused around Evie, but I think that you've definitely shown an aplomb for the sports writing side also. around Evie, but I think that you've definitely shown an aplomb for the sports writing side also. Are there other sports that might be on the docket for you? Wow. I haven't even thought about that. I love stories about sports. I used to say that particularly with professional basketball, I've watched a lot more basketball documentaries than I have actually watched NBA basketball. I love stories about sports.

I don't have any in my mind right now, but I wouldn't rule it out. I certainly think it's always a rich source of thinking about how people relate to culture and their town that they live in and all that. What is your own history with baseball and what about it appeals to you other than the enigma of the Yips? I know that you had a team chosen for you or you collaboratively chose a team with Mike and Joe. So how's that going? I did. You know, honestly, it was really hard to make that stick because it turned out that so they chose for me.

If you didn't hear this episode of the podcast, I went on there and asked them to choose to suggest a team that would be my new favorite professional baseball team, because I had lived in enough different cities that I had come kind of unattached from the ones that I knew. And so they ultimately wound up suggesting a bunch and I chose the Astros. And the problem was, I chose the Astros, and then they immediately won the World Series, which is really what you don't want to happen because then you feel like you're a brand new fan and you have nowhere to go but down. So that wound up like weirdly not taking that much. I did grow up as a Phillies fan and I'm, you know, kind of unsurprisingly, I suppose I rediscovered that a little bit this last season.

I think a lot of my, but a lot of my history with baseball is also that, you know, I played softball when I was a kid. That was the only sport I ever liked playing. I loved playing softball. You know, I have specific memories of like, my dad took me to the Terry Mulholland no hitter in like 1990, I think. And my nephews have played baseball their whole lives. The younger one just graduated from high school. And they, they have played baseball their whole lives. The younger one just graduated from high school. And they have always been Little League guys. So Little League and high school baseball guys. So, you know, and my brother-in-law has been their coach a lot of the time. And so the whole family is kind of a baseball family, even though I don't get to watch as much

actual baseball as I wish I did. at least to my ears, which I didn't think it was. There were a lot of, you know, themes and emotional through lines that were explored through this love story. And I wonder whether you thought of it as escapism, as something where people would read this to distract themselves from their lives, or, you know, whether it's just a story that is about real people working through real problems. You know, I think the bottom line for me is that it's almost, it's fascinating to see how people have received the book so differently for exactly the reason that you say. There are people who say, well, I was excited about this book, but it was way too, it wound up being way too serious, and it wasn't like comedic enough. And then there are also people who say, I love this book, because there was one person who reviewed it and said, I enjoyed it. It's decidedly not challenging. And I mean, look,

it was mostly a it was mostly a hey, this is a fun book kind of thing. But there is part of you that bristles at those things. But honestly, in the end, you have to kind of let the book be in the world and be what it is. But it completely depends on the person. There are people who reacted much the way you did and said, this seems like it's got like some, there's some interesting and tough stuff going on in this book. But then there are people who read it for the setting and the baseball game and the, you know, the kind of the love story and the banter and the kissing and all that stuff. And they're able to enjoy it on that level. And honestly, whatever level makes people happy is fine with me.

You obviously have, you know, your own radio show that is pop culture focused. The book is peppered with pop culture references, but I think probably not too many that it's going to feel dated soon. And I'm curious how you balance that with wanting to make it feel contemporary, but also not wanting it to, you know, obviously be the last show that we binge watched on Netflix. Right, right. You know, so my my pop culture happy hour co panelist, Glenn Weldon has a thing that he always says about movies that have too many pop culture references and he he refers to them as having the you da ant problem because if you watch I think it's ants auntie z um there was a thing that they played in every commercial

that was them telling one of the ants you da ant and it just sounds so old now yeah so you're always trying to stay away from you to aunt um you don't want anything that's going to make it seem like it's of a particular moment at the same time culture is a really important part of how people bond and how they you know how they the things that they talk about and refer to so i've tried to strike a balance between one thing i did was was cheat a little bit by having some of the references all already be a little bit retro, like they'll be talking about Law and Order or Dawson's Creek or something like that. So they're already kind of not contemporary because those nostalgia references live on. And then the other thing is sometimes I just created it myself, my editor, and I had this exact conversation about the fact that at one time, Dina Nevy spent a lot of time watching Scandal.

And she said, you know, that's going to date the book because Scandal is not going to be on that much longer. And at the time, of course, it was still on. And so I made it into a fictional show for exactly this reason, because that way it doesn't put it too much in an individual moment. Could have picked Grey's Anatomy to outdate us all. It's true. It's true. It's true. That's the, that one's probably going to be on when the, yeah, when I'm 112. So you tweeted that there were a couple scenes in the book, some of your favorite scenes in the book that were added very, very late in the process.

And I'm wondering how that works in a novel when I almost imagine that you would have these pivotal scenes in your head and you'd have to figure out how to link them and build up to them. Right. It sounds like some of them were added after much of the rest of the book. Well, I'll give you an example that I think I can give without kind of spoiling anything major. But there's a moment in the book in which Evie's best friend Andy and Dean go out to a bar and have drinks while Evie stays at home with Andy's kids and kind of babysitting.

And one of the things that was in the original draft was the scene that you saw was the scene where Andy and Dean were out having drinks. And now you don't see that. It's just kind of described because it's kind of easy to figure out what that conversation was probably like. And what you see instead is the scene where she's at home with the kids. So it takes place essentially at the same time. And I wouldn't have wanted to have both of those scenes in there because I think it would have slowed down the story at that moment a little bit too much. So I chose between them. And the second of those two scenes, the scene where she's at home with the kids, watching a movie with them

is a scene that came in quite late. And it's just a matter of trying to, in conversation with your editor, get a feeling for like, what does the book need right here? What am I not getting enough of? What do I feel like is just kind of reiterating what I already know about where these characters are. So one thing that my wife, Jessie, was wondering as she read was how you decide when your characters are too clever or as you're writing your dialogue, you know, do you want it to sound like Amy Sherman Palladino and it's fun to read and fun to listen to. But at the same time, you're thinking, does anyone talk like this? Are these people actually this witty? So how do you calibrate that? I went back at one point and did a kind of an edit for, I wouldn't say it was

exactly like, I don't want them to be too clever, but it was like, I want to be somewhat consistent in how they talk and what kinds of jokes they tend to make. And, um, and also like how much they swear, like Dean swears more than she does. So I kind of went back thinking I wanted to check the dialogue for the fact that I'm not just entertaining myself because dialogue, fun, clever dialogue entertains me, but it doesn't mean that it's what the book needs in every, in every situation. So I think I handled it kind of about the way that you seem to be kind of describing, which is you don't ever want it to tip over into something where it feels completely self-indulgent and

you're just kind of going and going and going. But at the same time, in the right situation, when people are getting to know each other or when you're getting to know characters, a kind of good back and forth banter is very pleasurable to me and also a good way to kind of get to know how people relate to each other. So it's all a balance. It's like everything else. You just have to try to find what's that sweet spot. So I have one more question about the creative process. And as you noted, you started this several years ago. And as you mentioned in the acknowledgements, you would put it down and

pick it up again from time to time. And I think all of us in our daily lives and our regular jobs, we're writing nonfiction. And like you, I have ideas for something like this. And it's something that I want to pursue. But it's hard, I think, to switch over to that part of your brain and to commit yourself to writing more after you're done with your regular writing. So how did you eventually have this blossom and all come together? You know, I think that what happened, I got to the point where I had picked it up and put it down enough times that I now had enough of it that I felt like I might actually have enough that I can go forward from here and finish it.

Because to me, the problem was always, the biggest problem was always confidence. It feels like such an incredibly daunting task. And it is a daunting task. But the idea of finishing something at novel length, if you haven't ever done it, it feels like how would that ever happen? Like, how would I ever do that? Especially if you've always wanted to do it and you never have. There comes a point where you sort of think like, maybe I can't do it. But I got to the point where I had enough of this story where I thought I want to keep writing it. I like it. I had gotten some nice feedback from friends about the early parts of it. And I

thought, I'm just going to start to push a little bit at a time. And then sort of summer and fall of 2016 was just a heavy time to be working in a newsroom. And it was a kind of a high, high stress moment in all of our lives, I think. And so I needed something to do that was pleasurable and lovely. And I think this was that. And it gave me a lot to think about that wasn't work related. It wasn't news related. It was just kind of within my control. Well, you don't have to answer this if you are contemplating a sequel or anything like that. But, you know, the book ends a couple of months after they speak for the first time, let's put it that way, after a while. Where do you see your two protagonists a couple of months after the events of Andy's wedding? Are they together? Are they in Maine? Are they in New York? Do you have a, did you do any future casting for them?

I think that they probably stayed. I think they're living somewhat in both places. I think that although they both really love Maine, I don't necessarily know that he in particular would want to stay. He makes a couple of different references to the fact that it's a very white place. And I think if he I think for him having lived in New York for a long time, I don't know that he necessarily would want to live there forever. And I think the implication is in the book, they're going to sort of they're going to sort of keep both places open and see

how they feel. I think she has some desire to explore the wider world. So I think they probably still love Maine and probably still are there with her dad quite a lot. But I don't know that they would that they would kind of, you know, stay in that house for forever full time. Perhaps we'll see Dean on a backfield in Arizona or Florida somewhere. Maybe so, maybe so. How did you decide that Evie would be a transcriptionist? Because that is personally maybe the least favorite part of my job is having to do what she does as a job. And so I can't blame her for being in the doldrums at times. I think I wanted to stress the fact that she is somebody who is always fascinated by other

people's stories. She tries to take care of everyone. She takes care of her dad. She takes care of her best friends, her best friend's kids. She's very invested in other people's stories. And it's a way that she avoids thinking too hard about her own life. And it occurred to me at one point that being a transcriptionist is really, in order to be good at it and in order to enjoy it, you have to really love the experience of putting a piece of tape in and just not knowing what you're going to hear

and hearing all kinds of different things including all the stuff that winds up not being interesting enough to make a final cut but that really gives you kind of the color of people's lives and conversations so it it seemed to say something to me about who she was and what her keen interest in other people's stories was. And are they real people to you? Did they surprise you at times, as some novelists will say, that their characters surprise them? Are you surprised that Dean doesn't have a baseball reference page? You know, I think that the closest thing I would say to that, I always feel a little bit, it always sounds so corny when people say that, because like, it's a fictional character,

you made it up. At the same time, I will say, because the book opens with this, I think it's fair to say, you know, Evie is in the middle of trying to leave her husband when he dies abruptly. And I think that when I was first writing the book, I was focused on the fact that because of that, she felt very guilty. People were comforting her, assuming that she was grieving. She didn't know how to explain to them, actually, I was planning on leaving him. And so she felt guilty and bad and all that. But it wasn't until I was a good way into the book, that I really realized that the other thing she's feeling is she's feeling a frustration from the fact that it was part of her trying to take control of her life to leave under her own power.

So there's a moment in the book where she says to Dean, like, I think I would have left. I think I would have gone through with it. But she didn't get the opportunity to do that. And that's a frustration for her. And that's a more complicated and a very hard thing for her to talk about with anybody, because how can you be angry at somebody for having died so that you couldn't leave them? Like it sounds terrible, but it's very, for her, very logical. Well, I highly recommend it. We both really enjoyed it. And I don't know what people mean exactly when they say that something is a good beach read because I've read all kinds of books on the beach. That's how I feel too. But I think people would say that this is a good beach read. So if you're going to the beach or if you're not, just go read it. And if you like

baseball, that's just an added bonus, I think. And the baseball plays an important part in the story, but it doesn't depend on the baseball. And really, I think we all like baseball and watch baseball for the underlying themes and the things that we learn about life and ourselves through baseball. Or, you know, maybe we just watch to see who wins the pennant. I don't know. But I think there's more to it than that. And a lot of that seeps into the book. So it is called Evy Drake Starts Over. You can pick it up anywhere. You can find Linda on Twitter at Linda Holmes. She has a bunch of upcoming events all over the country, which is her pinned tweet right now, if you want to see if she's coming to your area.

And please tell me where I can rent that house in Maine because I want to go there. We'll follow up. All right. Thanks, Linda. Thank you so much. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, Linda. Thank you so much. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks for listening. While you're buying Linda's book, why not add my book to the purchase?

It's called The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. Please leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you like it. You can also support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support. Patrick Emery, Cody Baron Priest, Eric Hartman, Jonathan Baker, and Tony Siesko. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms.

Please keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you're a supporter, thanks to Dylan Higgins for putting in extra editing hours this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you all early next week. But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. The consequence should be Church Bell free swells the dean's daughter and me.