Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1589: The Home Run Retriever

Episode Date: September 12, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the extraordinary stat lines of Brewers pitcher Corbin Burnes, the role of randomness in baseball, the latest two-team half no-hitter, the Rays’ historic all-lefty lineup, the horrors of Red Sox pitching, the approaching end of the regular season, the states of the standings and playoff odds, the underperforming […]

I said danger to the smoke detector. I said danger to the smoke detector. I said danger to the smoke detector. I said danger to the smoke detector. Hello and welcome to episode 1589 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined, as always, by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. How are you? by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. How are you? It looks like you remember early in the film Parasite when there's fumigation going on and they let the stuff come

in the windows. Yes. It looks a bit like that in the city of Seattle right now. Yeah. Which, you know, it's hard to know how to judge one's own position in the world relative to other people's right now. We are fortunate in that, like, you know, I'm sitting in the city, safe and sound. But it's eerie, Ben. It's a little bit eerie on Friday. Yeah, I can imagine. Does it look like AT&T Park looked the other night when I would comp it to Blade Runner 2049? It had that sort of orange look going?

Or I guess it's not the right time of day to be orange. But what does it look like? Just dark? It is neither that color nor is it that sort of dark and foreboding, but it just looks like a very bad air pollution kind of day, which we don't typically get here. And, you know, it's uncomfortable if you're outside for any length of time at all. So that's not the best. Well, I guess you're already wearing a mask most of the time so at least you don't have to do anything different can you smell it or detect it while you're inside as well yeah everything smells like a campfire well i hope that all of you west coasters uh get clearer skies and fewer fires in the future.

It's been very sad to see just from afar over here from East Coast safety to watch the whole West Coast go up in flames. That's not great. No, it's not the best, but here we are doing our baseball podcast as best we can. Yes. So we have a guest whom we will bring on in just a little while. We got an email last week from listener Dan McMenamin, who clued us into a fellow Effectively Wild listener and Facebook group member who works for the Mariners.

And part of his duties, Dan told us, in this strange season is to retrieve dingers at Seattle Mariners home games. And that sounded intriguing. We have to talk to the dinger retriever at T-Mobile Park. So we will shortly be talking to that man, Sean Guiney, who is the Mariners official souvenir manager. That is his title. That is the only person who has that title for a major league team. And we've got him. We

only book the biggest, most exclusive guests here. A couple quick things before we bring Sean on. I just happened to see after we recorded that there is now a Fangraphs post about this very topic that I was going to bring up in banter. So your staff is all over this but Corbin Burns has I think my favorite stat line this season at least in tandem with his 2019 stat line and Tony Wolfe just wrote about this and I haven't read what he wrote yet but I've been paying close attention to Corbin Burns this season because he was my pick for breakout player of the year when we did our ringer MLB staff predictions when the season started and they make me make predictions and I picked Corbin Burns and not that that was the most brilliant pick in the world because he was good in some respects last season he had a 8.82

ERA which is not great generally but all of his peripherals were pretty promising, and he struck out a lot of guys, and he just had terrible, historically awful luck in a couple of respects. So it was really just a strange season. He and Mitch Keller were both last season the only pitchers in major league history to have batting average on balls and play allowed over 410 in a season of at least 45 innings pitched so that was one way in which he had terrible luck of 414 babbit but he also had the highest home run per fly ball rate on record at fangraphs so almost 40 percent like 39% of his fly balls went over the fence last year. So just everything went wrong. I mean, if it was in the ballpark, it fell for a hit. And

if it didn't fall for a hit, it probably fell beyond the fence for the worst kind of hit. So everything was going against him. And yet he's got great stuff. He throws hard. He has some of the best spin rates in baseball. And I figured, well, if he just has regular luck, if he just pitches to his X fit from last season, which was 3.37, then he'll make me look smart. Except I think everyone's probably smart enough to figure these things out at this point. But now what has happened is that he's gone in the other direction entirely. So his peripherals haven't changed at all. I mean, they've barely budged at all. So he had 49 innings pits last year. He's up to 45 and a third this year. And almost everything is the same across the board. His strikeout rate went from 12.9 per nine to 12.7 his walk rate 3.7 to 3.8 i mean almost identical his ground ball rate is like a percentage point apart and so his xfip is again almost identical to what it was last year and xfip for those who don't know, it's like FIP, except it goes one step further and sort of normalizes your home run per fly ball rate in addition to taking the BABIP out of the equation based on the fact that most pitchers tend to give up roughly the same percentage of their fly balls turning into home runs. And so if you're wildly in one direction or another, you expect that to swing back toward the mean.

And he has swung back past the mean in the other direction. So he now has a.233 BABIP and a 2.9% home run per fly ball rate. So he has only given up one home run on the season. And again, he's still given up roughly the same rate of balls in the air, but they just have not gone over the season. And again, he's still given up like roughly the same rate of balls in the air, but they just have not gone over the fence. And so he has a 1.99 ERA right now. And so you could say, wow, what a brilliant breakout pick by Ben. He took the guy with the almost nine ERA and he foresaw that he would have a sub two ERARA this year. But of course, he has basically been sort of the same guy and has had just completely polar opposite results.

Yeah, he went from being one of the unluckiest pitchers ever to one of the luckiest pitchers this season. There have been some changes in his usage that Tony talks about, right? So he has largely abandoned his four-seamer. He's throwing a two-seamer more now. But it is sort of a curious, he's a curious case. It's not entirely clear what is motivating and sort of driving the change apart from the usage and just the shift in luck.

And I think that Tony enjoyed it as an exercise as much in realizing what we don't know as what we're able to suss out. But yeah, his peripherals are wildly identical. Yeah. It is a shocking amount of sameness year to year. And I think that there's a good conversation for us to have about XFIP

and how much of your home run rate is scale versus not and how much suppression you can sort of count on year to year. But he is a very curious case. And, you know, I'm sure that if we were to ask him, he'd say, I'll take this. But it is very odd that it could swing so wildly season to season given the same set of underlying stats i am naturally disposed to being an anxious kind of person and so on the one hand if i were burns i would enjoy this very much but i would also feel afraid every single day yeah right which says probably more about me meg rowley than it says anything about corbin Burns but I would just be I'd be looking over my shoulder uh Tony used a delightful mob informant mole analogy in his in his piece and I just sit there thinking of Corbin Burns being like well they're gonna get me so um anyhow just like imagine what it's like to be Corbin Burns like I I haven't talked to him. I haven't gone looking to see if he has spoken about this, but I did write about Mitch Keller earlier this year

and played part of my conversation with him on the podcast and just about his experience as a rookie coming up and immediately having the highest BABIP ever in that amount of playing time and how he sort of underwent a sabermetric awakening as part of that process because he found out about FIP and everything, oddly, not from the pirates, which was sort of an indictment of their previous regime. I think that they didn't really try to reassure him.

According to Keller, he just saw FIP on a scoreboard and sort of went searching himself and then figured out all of that. So I don't know where Burns is on the sabermetric spectrum, but just like, you know, do you feel like you're bad one year and good the next year? Or do you just feel totally at the mercy of fate and the universe? Like we all are. I mean, luck plays an enormous role in all of our lives, but I don't know that we're as aware of that on a day-to-day basis. You know, when I'm just sitting here writing or, you know, you're editing or writing or we're podcasting or whatever, like, it's not as apparent as it is if you're a baseball player. And some days the balls are falling or going over the fence and some days they're not and some seasons they are or they aren't so i just wonder because like it must have been demoralizing for him last year

even though he must have felt encouraged by the fact that he was missing bats and still had great stuff and now he must feel on top of the world but it seems like he's kind of doing things the same pretty much, or at least the factors under his control have been pretty much the same. And I even talked to someone with the Brewers when I was going to pick him as my breakout pick just to ask, like, am I missing something here? I mean, is there some reason why he had what seems to be terrible luck? Is it more than just luck? And that person was just like nope it's like

the weirdest thing we didn't understand it either it was frustrating we just were kind of waiting for his luck to turn around and boy it has well i imagine that tony will take some comfort in hearing that the the brewers were similarly perplexed by the results that they were seeing last year because yeah i think that on the one hand, he was having a healthy appreciation for just the oddity that the sport can allow and the uncertainty even as a smart analyst that you can encounter when you're trying to understand something better. I don't know. I like that.

It would be so boring if we could sort everything out. Yeah. So I like that both because it lends some excitement and pizzazz to analysis and also I think can highlight areas where we should look and see like, oh, there's something here we don't understand. This probably bears further scrutiny and maybe it'll reveal something that is relevant not only to this particular player, but to baseball more broadly. And that can be very

encouraging. But also sometimes it's Friday and you want to file and you want to be able to say, here's the one thing that Corbin Burns changed that made this all better. And when you can't do that, it's frustrating. So I will pass that along to Tony. I imagine he will feel encouraged. Yeah, I think it's just a good illustration of just how randomness really has a huge effect in baseball because we just kind of like persuade ourselves that we are the masters of our domains and, you know, whatever happens to us, we deserve it or we earn it or something. is but probably also some things went your way and that's just very very apparent when you're a baseball player and it's staring you right in the face with those stats so i don't know like if i were corbin burns if i were a major league player of course i would be looking at my stats and i'd be looking at my defense independent stats or if i were a hitter i'd be looking at my expected stats and so I'm sure I'd

try to maintain perspective. And if I'm hitting the ball hard and it's just going right at someone, on the one hand, I think I would be maybe more equipped to weather that than someone who doesn't know that and just blames themselves for all of it. But I doubt I would be able to maintain just sort of like a Vulcan impartiality about it all and just be like, well, I'm not doing anything wrong and my luck will even out. I'm sure I'd probably be as frustrated as anyone else. And I don't know if I'd be throwing my helmet or cursing because it's not really my temperament. But on the inside, at least, I would probably be just as frustrated. And I guess, in a sense, maybe you would be even more frustrated in some ways because if everything's going against you and you're doing everything

right, then you can't even beat yourself up about it. And if it's not even like your fielders or something, not that you should yell at them or anything, but at least in the privacy of your own home, you could say, well, my teammates are letting me down and make yourself feel better about it. But if it's not that, if it's just pure chance, then how do you even rage against the universe? It's not anyone causing this pain or inflicting it on you. It's just one of those things. This is why you need a sad girl summer playlist, Ben. That's what this music is for. Yeah.

And by the way, I should also mention that part of Corbin Burns' non-hit allowing this year enabled a half no-hitter. I forget what we were even calling it, but Sam and I, we did a stat blast some weeks ago about this concept of the two team half no hitter. So it's not one team holding the other team hitless for nine innings. It's both teams holding their opponents hitless for four and a half innings. So it's the half no-hitter. I don't think this concept has caught on. But there was one in August, August 18th, the Brewers and the Twins. That was a Corbin Burns game.

And that was what inspired the listener email from Drew, who noticed that that had happened and wanted to know how common it was. And it just happened again on Thursday Astros versus A's they had one so you you have to get through the top of the fifth with neither team allowing a hit and they did and then Mark Canna broke it up in the first batter of the bottom of the fifth and that was that but they did it and there were some listeners of course faithfully tracking this and letting me know via twitter there were a couple of facebook group threads about this and my favorite was dave burke in the facebook group he posted double half

game no hitter watch astros a's mania and Rikidi both 9 up 9 down. Then there's a comment also by Dave in the same thread. Couple of walks from Rikidi there but just 3 outs needed for Minaya to get to the halfway point and then one more comment there we have it. Not at all excited to have seen that.

That was the whole thread. No one else responded or really reacted in any way but I really appreciate that a couple people were aware enough of this to tell me it was happening. And as listener Adam Ott told us when he looked this up for the stat blast, it's rare. It's about half as common as the actual no-hitter that everyone cares about so there have been at least two this season which is somewhat unusual i think there have been maybe a 108 since 1918 something like this unless there was one that no one told me about which is entirely possible so people are are watching just a couple of effectively wild listeners are keeping an eye out for the half game no hitter i appreciate that i um i noticed that thread also and the the conclusion of it made me laugh very hard because as it was unfolding i was like i can't care about this i can't like i care about a lot of very silly stuff and so i don't say that like other people

caring about this is is bad or wrong or useless you should if you can find anything at all that brings you some amount of joy right now i think that you should lean into it very hard i can't care about this yeah but other people are certainly allowed to but it made me laugh quite quite hard because i just the whole time i was like um should i care about it? You know, you always have that moment when people delight in things and you can't delight in them. It doesn't inspire that feeling of warmth and excitement that you can tell other people share. And when I have that disconnect, I always wonder if I am missing something obvious and important. And then I was like, like no i'm not and then and then i felt affirmed that i was indeed not not missing anything yeah so i didn't get any joy from the

combined no hitting what are we calling them whatever this is i was like half game no hitter half game no hitter that did not inspire any joy or delight in me but the thread about it inspired a great amount of joy so i'm just saying you find uh you find your delights in odd places sometimes yeah i want to care about it because it's like the the hipster no hitter that's kind of what i said when i talked about it with sam it's like the no hitter no one notices in a way, it's even more impressive than the no-hitter everyone else cares about. But I think I also said that in practice, it would probably be a letdown because the game just goes on and no one notices or marks the occasion in any way. There's no celebration. There's no anyone being mobbed on the mound.

It's just the game goes on and then someone gives up a hit and that's that. So it's totally anticlimactic. But I'm glad that someone tipped me off that this was happening. I am very excited for there to be spooky tinsel light up things at Target for Halloween. And I don't expect other people to be as excited about that as I am but I am very excited so sometimes you are excited about stuff but this is not one of the stuffs this is not among the stuff yeah but this is uh maybe a more fun fact I just saw a tweet from Andrew Simon who is quote tweeting a tweet by Rays beat writer Juan Trippio that there are nine left-handed hitters in the Rays lineup tonight.

Just sent this to other Ben. Yeah, this is interesting, right? Yeah, and according to Andrew Simon, who just used baseball reference to look this up, there has never been a time in MLB history, at least going back to 1901, that a team has started nine left-handed batters in the same game. And Andrew says there have been more than 100 starting lineups with nine batters who

were lefty or switch, which would be nine batters coming up lefty if there's a right-handed pitcher, but that is not quite the same. So it's Austin Meadows, Joey Wendell, Brandon Lau, G-Man Choi, Austin Meadows, Joey Wendell, Brendan Lau, G-Man Choi, Kevin Kiermaier, Yoshi Tsutsugo, Nate Lowe, Brett Phillips, and Michael Perez. Nine lefties, huh? Yeah. Wild. That's interesting. I guess I, in anticipation likely of this Switch thing maybe, was surprised that this was the first time just because there have been so many games yeah and so a lineup thing seemed particularly vulnerable to having been done before almost certainly and yet

and yet this is the this is the first time which of course made me wonder who are the Rays facing they're facing Andrew Triggs and then I thought to myself they're facing a Boston pitcher would it matter who it was and that wasn't a generous thought but I will admit to it being a thought that I had been that was a thought I had in my brain yeah right-handed pitcher so they loaded up on lefties for this game. And Andrew Triggs does have reverse splits for his career. And lefties have actually done worse against him. But evidently the Rays believe that that is not real. And it probably isn't because he has pitched only about 170 innings in his career. So you would not make much of that.

And I guess the Rays just have a lot of lefties on hand. And you have expanded rosters. I guess that makes it easier probably to load up a lineup with all lefties, but you still need a pretty lefty heavy roster to do that and not sacrifice some performance there. So that's kind of cool. That is a fun fact. That is a first. I mean, think of how many lineups and games there have been, and that has never happened. It's sort of surprising, I guess. Ben, we have to grapple with this Boston pitching situation for a hot second. I mean, I know that we have done it before collectively as a society, as people who think about what goes wrong in the world and why, ben yeah ben you looked at this lately not lately i have averted my eyes after how it started how does it look now it looks ben it looks pretty bad i'm gonna i'm here to tell you that it looks pretty bad so when you look at um their team pitching stats as a whole so this is both starters and relievers they are sporting oh gravy a 610 era

a 547 fip they have combined been worth negative 1.5 wins the next worst team at least by our estimation at fangraphs is the tigers who have been worth 0.4 wins so that's quite a that's quite a delta to be bridged and then if you start to look at it in terms of starters versus relievers so they have the worst rotation in baseball worth almost a whole negative win on their own negative win we need a better way of talking about that because that doesn't make any sense at all they do not have the the worst bullpen in baseball that honor belongs to the mariners who've been worse this can't be true can they have really been worth almost a negative 1.5 wins on their own oh marin, Mariners or Leavers. I believe it. Ironic that the Padres traded for like half of them. Well, I think that they probably got all the good ones. Yes, I think so.

Perhaps. Goodness. But anyhow, Boston fans, you know, it's as bad as you think. I don't know if that's any comfort, but it hasn't been great. Although, you know, I'm going gonna switch gears back to the mariners ben you know who's in the mariners bullpen now oh yes i do know jimmy yacobonus yes he's already thrown an inning major minor league free agent draft implications i have not tracked the current state of the minor league free agent draft i was sassy toward you on twitter and then someone said

isn't sam smoking both of you which might be true yeah I haven't looked either because Sam taunted me for how poorly I was doing a while ago and so since then I have not dared to even look but but yes uh I am I'm sorry about that but we will of course tally up the standings when the season ends and we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. I remember Jeff tracking a few years ago when the Reds were bad at pitching. He was tracking whether the Reds could have a sub-replacement pitching staff over a full season. And I think he was sort of excited that they actually pulled it off. Although I think subsequently since framing got factored into war, I'm not sure that they are sub-re that season their pitchers anymore but the Red Sox are doing it so I don't know whether they would do it over 162 games but they're they're really making a run at it I can't see that there are a lot of pitchers who would be coming back say if they continue to play who would really improve that equation so yeah it has not been a fun team to

watch and i should also mention because some people might be wondering that the eight left-handed hitter lineup has been done 26 times so we have come very close before but it has not happened until now interesting yeah i didn't think about, but I would imagine that that makes it slightly less rare. But still, even that, not a ton. Not a ton even just for eight. So, Ben, do you have a moment to engage with our postseason seeds ever so briefly? Yeah, because the regular season, don't know if you've noticed, but it's almost over. You've noticed, but it's almost over. Yeah, I have noticed. You know why, Ben? Because we do not yet have a postseason schedule,

and I realize that it is very complicated, and they are trying to put everyone in a bubble, seemingly. But these things take planning, Ben. I don't care for how little planning I've been allowed to do this year, just in general, but even specifically related to my job. But among the teams currently in the mix, some of these, not surprising, but when I get to one that is surprising, you let me know.

That means we're not going to be talking about the American League fields because that is pretty unsurprising. Although I will say the Yankees as the current eighth seed at 22 and 21, although I believe they are ahead in the game they were playing against Baltimore as we are recording.

So that record is going to shift. I mean, it would shift the game they were playing against Baltimore as we are recording, so that record is going to shift. I mean, it would shift even if they were not ahead, but we'll shift to their advantage theoretically. But they are the eighth seed, which is wild based on our expectations coming into this year. And then the team in ninth place is those same Orioles, and then the Tigers, and then the Mariners in their terrible bullpen. So that's wild. If the Mariners unseat the Tigers and then the Mariners and their terrible bullpen. So that's wild. If the Mariners unseat the Astros in the West, which I will say I do not believe will happen,

but would be hilarious. It would be hilarious. It would. Looking down at the playoff odds, gaps are still huge, which is kind of counterintuitive if you were just looking at the standings because there's no daylight really between the Yankees and the Orioles at all hardly. And yet you look at the playoff odds and it's like even though the Yankees have had this incredibly rough stretch and have been missing a lot of players and we're under 500 there briefly, their playoff odds are still over 90 percent before this game is even over and

meanwhile the Orioles are still in single digits so even though we just have like a couple weeks left in the season and their records are are very close together I guess the the projections still say and the strength of schedule and whatever else that the Orioles cannot do this, but it would be quite fun if they did. It would be fun, but you know where the real fun is to be had, Ben, is in the National League. Are you ready for the current seeding in the National League? I am. We have the Dodgers in the first seed spot,

which is unsurprising because they are behemoths, titans, here to play mookie bets at second base as if it is nothing. And so they're doing their business. You have the Braves with their very bad rotation. You have the Cubs with their questionable bullpen. You have the Padres, which are we safe in saying that the Padres are the most fun team in baseball right now? It's them or the White Sox for me personally.

Yeah, I think we can say that the padres have been the most fun this season yeah and then you have the phillies with their terrible bullpen you have the cardinals who have still somehow only have a record of 19 and 18 because they still have games to make up and then the marlins and Yep. Ben, it's the Marlins and the Giants. It is. I don't know how this happened exactly, but it has been pretty fun to have the Marlins be trade deadline buyers and to have both these teams be in the mix. Even though the Marlins took one of the worst losses we've seen in some time this past week, they have been pretty good this year. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, they have realistic chances. The Giants, last time I looked earlier this week, were favorites to be a playoff team, which is still the case, I guess. Yeah, I believe so. I think the Marlins' back game that they lost to Atlanta is a great argument for us all being sort of picky and discerning about when we deploy particular words.

I think that we overuse shellacking. And this proves that you should really save it. You really got to save shellacking for a game like that because it was a shellacking. But it's not, you know, it's five runs. That's not a shellacking. This was a shellacking. but it's not, you know, it's five runs. That's not a shellacking. This was a shellacking. I think we overuse it.

I think that the, you know, the Marlins and the Giants, quite surprising that the Phillies have managed to sort of hold on. Also surprising given how bad that bullpen is. I just feel so bad for the Reds. Yeah, I know. And yet they're pitching because I was just looking at their pitching war this season because I was recounting how they had a sub replacement pitching staff not so long ago. And now they have an excellent pitching staff, at least according to Fangraphs War. Cleveland and Minnesota and San Diego or they're tied with San Diego so far in war from their pitching staff and yet yeah it has not gone the way that they wanted and obviously their position players are toward the bottom end of that scale which is why they are where they are yeah it's

just you want teams that actively try to get better to succeed because you want that to to be behavior that is emulated and sort of incentivized and they kept trying to get better at the deadline and it's not like there's no way for them to make the postseason but it does not look great it doesn't look great so that's a bummer but that is our current playoff situation it is wild still to see 16 teams featured here i will get it wrong forever have you started getting used to there only being seven innings in double headers yet uh i guess so i haven't been surprised a lot lately by thinking that the game was going to go on longer and then it didn't but uh it it did take some adjusting, definitely. I'm still adjusting to that one.

I have the habit. I imagine this is not so dissimilar from what you do, but if I'm flipping through different games, I'll see what is close and late and sort of prioritize watching that unless there's a particular matchup or what have you, a starter who's going, who I'm keen to see. And I have come close to almost

missing the last inning of a double header several times because i'm like oh it's only in the seventh and i'm like wait a minute that's important now so yeah if you're a fan and you're watching both games then i think it's in your mind but if you're just flipping from one game to another then yeah it might not be clearly marked enough or maybe we just haven't conditioned ourselves well enough to adjust to that. I mean, you know, you go a whole lifetime thinking that seventh inning means one thing and then it means something else entirely. So yeah, I could see why that would take a little while. Very confusing. Seventh inning is when you're supposed to stretch. Yeah. Here's another thing that must be particularly disappointing about rooting for the Reds right now is that their underlying numbers have been pretty good. And as I recall, this has been the case for them now two years in a row, because I think last year they underperformed their underlying stats, their Pythagorean record and Bass Ryan's record, etc.

underlying stats, their Pythagorean record and Baserein's record, etc. And this year, according to Fangraphs, they do have a 19-25 record. That's a 432 winning percentage. They should have a 23-21 record. That's 513. So basically, they've played like a playoff team. They have the deserved record of a playoff team, and yet not at all the actual record, the record that counts. And that's two years in a row now. And I guess that could mean something, but it probably still doesn't mean anything. It's just, you know, the Corbin Burns thing that we were talking about earlier. It's just bad timing, bad sequencing bad luck whatever so that's even more frustrating if you go for it and you play like a playoff team but you still aren't one i can just say with a tremendous amount of authority the only thing that feels good uh at the end of the year is whether or not you've made the playoffs that's not true i enjoy a lot about baseball that isn't the postseason but there comes a point where you're like no i just would like to see my favorite team playing in october and the fact that they were good

but didn't quite make it came for you yeah it was uh 12 years ago maybe right yeah yeah so you can talk yourself into accepting the fate of your favorite team in any number of ways. I think there's a lot about baseball that is worth enjoying and celebrating and paying attention to that is not playing in the postseason. But sometimes, Ben, you just want to watch your dumb old team play in October. You just want to be able to do it, and you can't. Then your entire engagement with the sport and that team changes. And you realize that by the time they do it, you will have been working in baseball

media for a while and it will not feel the same. And then you have grief about that, but you're like, yeah, it'll be fine. Cause then when they lose, it won't hurt as badly. And, and then you realize you really should go back to therapy. So it's just a whole thing, Ben. Yeah. What has been that process for you of losing that feeling of intense fandom? Because I know that people are curious about that. I think I see people discuss it in the Facebook group sometimes. Why aren't Ben and Sam and Meg fans more? Which I understand because it's an alien thing, I think, when you've been a fan your whole life to think of losing that fandom and yet still caring about baseball very much and in some ways even more than ever, but not really looking at it through that lens of one team and i get the sense that for you it wasn't like an intentional losing that like thinking i

have to be impartial and fair and so i i must uh at least maintain a facade of being a neutral party and then maybe that becomes ingrained it just happened right i mean for me it just sort of happened too yeah i think that well you know fandom is not rational so it doesn't necessarily respond to the signal that is whether a team is winning or losing a lot so what i'm about to say like comes with an asterisk but it's easy to be well i don't know but easy being the right word i think that the maintaining some kind of balance between fandom when the team you like best is the mariners and impartiality is easy when the team is as bad as the mariners have sometimes been because you can just be like this is a bad baseball team and there's stuff to like and you

know they're very good players a strange concentration of like very consequential players to the sport on this bad baseball team that has never been to the World Series. But, you know, I think that your scope broadens, you have to pay attention to more things. I think the familiarity that comes with a team being part of your daily routine is important to sort of sustaining fandom. I mean, the stuff you root for changes when you're someone who works in the industry in some capacity. I think that, you know, I find myself rooting for teams of that like friends of mine work for because I'm like, I want, you know, like, I want good things for the Padres because they're super fun. And also because like Dave's my friend and

I want good things for Dave and I want the Rays to do well because of jeff and i want the phillies in that garbage bullpen to improve so that like corinne has a nice day you know like so that kind of changes some of your rooting interests in the way that you engage with it and i think that you know i'd rather i guess i'd rather the mariners win than not but it doesn't have the ability to kind of wreck my mood in the way that it did in my moments of most intense fandom so you put that stuff in other places you know I don't try to critically engage with football to quite the same degree that I do with baseball because I just get to be a fan. I know how the analytics work in football, and I get mad when the Seahawks run, when they should pass,

whether Russell Wilson, who's very good at that. But I also can just be mad on behalf of the guys I like best, and it doesn't have to be rational, and that's fine. So I think it- That was like Jeff with hockey. Right. So it's kind of gone to a different place. I don't know.

Like, it'll be really interesting to see. You know, I joke about it a lot, but like this Mariners team will go to the playoffs again sometime. And I'll probably still be around, hopefully. And so I don't know how I'll feel when that happens. It'll be really interesting to see. It might stir something in me again. You know, I think that if you ask Jeff,

like when the Mariners looked like they were kind of trouble at the end of the season, the last couple of years, like he was invested in a way he was surprised by. And I'm sure that's changed now that he can say we, when talking about the race in a way that no one can criticize, but you know, stuff moves

around and it'd it'd be interesting so i think that they should do it so that we can conduct an experiment on my mood yeah yeah with me it was just it just sort of slipped away without my trying really i had been a kind of hardcore fan growing up with the dynasty Yankees teams and a few subway stops away from Yankee Stadium. And then I did work for the Yankees for a little while in college, after college. And I think that was part of it. When you're working for a team, obviously you still root for that team to do well and to win, but not in quite the same way, or at least I think in baseball operations, there was almost a stigma about being a super fan. Right. Because it was like you want to keep it professional, right?

You don't want to be – it's almost like the no cheering in the press box sort of thing. I mean, at least when you're an intern, I mean, I guess if you're the GM or something, you still you can root as much as you want. But you didn't want to give anyone the impression that like you only wanted to be there, work there because you were a big fan and you thought just like it's a job like you go to it and you want the team to do well of course but it's still a job and whatever that aura of like magic and and childhood emotion just sort of slips away i think a little bit when it's a place where you're getting paid by the hour and you clock in and clock out and all of that it just takes a little bit of the mystique maybe out of it as interesting as it can be to be involved on that side of things and then writing and podcasting about baseball when it's sort of your job to pay attention to all the teams and all the players and the league, then your attention is diverted necessarily, and you're

not paying attention to this one team every single day. You're looking at the league as a whole, and so your view of the sport is maybe a little less parochial or partisan, and you realize that, hey, there's a lot of interesting stories here, and this team is really fun, and this player is really fun, And he's not on the team I grew up rooting for, but I'm still watching him a lot. And maybe I'm writing about him or podcasting about him. And I'm thinking about all these other teams all the time. Suddenly it's like, well, this one team is not so exceptional to me anymore. I suppose that it's not above the others to the same degree that it used to be, which is sort of sad.

Like it's definitely a loss on some level, but I think there are tradeoffs there. And it's nice to be aware of everything that's going on. Not that you can't be aware and also rooting for a team, but it's nice to lose that pressure and that feeling of living and dying with every pitch in some senses because I'm not going to have my night ruined because my team lost or something. But also you miss that sometimes because if you have your nights ruined when your team loses, then you also have your nights made when your team wins. Not that hopefully that is swinging your entire mindset and world for you, whether your sports team wins. But, you know, it can give you a boost and it's exciting and fun. And that was one of the things I liked so much about the Stompers summer is that Sam and I were really rooting hard and living and dying with every pitch again, which was something that we had sort of stopped doing with our childhood teams by that point. I think that it opens.

It's fine to feel that as a sense of loss. I think what I found myself appreciating about it is that it does, like you said, because you have a broader perspective on like what good really means. And I don't say that as if fans can't objectively evaluate not only their own team, but the league and sort of look around and say, oh, well, like, here's what, you know, an all-star actually looks like, not just the all-star on our team that automatically gets an all-star rate. So I don't mean to say that, but I do think it sort of opens you up to a feeling of appreciation for other performances. So like my engagement with Mike Trout as a player has changed over the years in a way that I really appreciate

because now even when Mike Trout does something really amazing against the Mariners, I'm like, God, that Mike Trout. And I'm not like, God, that Mike Trout. And I don't begrudge Mariners fans who feel that way about him to have that feeling. There are really good, interesting, fun football players who play in the NFC West who I cannot stand because they make my life difficult on Sundays during the football season. And that feeling doesn't exist for me with the Mariners anymore. And so you can look around the league and be like, wow, that guy's amazing. be a fan of the kind of game he's playing in a way that i can't when i'm being a fan of this team and it also lets you appreciate the really exceptional performances on the team you grew

up rooting for in a different kind of way so like i'm so jazzed for kyle lewis like this is the most excited i've been about a mariners rookie in a long time. This is so cool. He's a legitimate Rookie of the Year candidate. That's amazing. And I know a lot about the struggle he went through with his injuries. And I've heard about what kind of a person he is from people in the org. And he is genuinely good, right? He is standout in a way that is not about me being a Mariners fan. It's about me being a fan of good baseball. And that feels cool, too. It's just a different kind of thing. So we never get to feel 100% of the feelings we want all the time. We're always making a trade-off.

And so it's good to remember the ones that are cool, that you get to access even when you've lost something if you're able to. So yeah. Yeah, and there are writers and media people who pull it off. They just manage to keep that fandom somehow while still covering a whole league or another team really well and insightfully and professionally, you know, whether it's, I don't know, Will Leach with the Cardinals. I mean, he writes about all baseball teams and players, but he still seems to care about the Cardinals as much as ever. And I sort of envy

that. And I think you can pull that off. I think a lot of fans can be biased toward their team, but I think it's totally possible to be unbiased and still root really hard for a team or just to kind of look at things in a clear eyed way and want one thing to happen, but understand that it may not or why it didn't or whatever. So it can be done. I just think it's not common probably for people to totally keep that sense and do this for a living. By the way, speaking of shellacking and the Phillies' bullpen, here's a stat I just saw from Coreyory sideman the four relievers the phillies traded four have faced 115 batters the slash line of the hitters in those 115 plate appearances 364 452 737 and those were the reinforcements that was the cavalry that was like hey we we need to put this Oh my gosh. Not great. All right. Well, I'm glad you said something nice about the Mariners just then because I felt bad about how we were talking about the Mariners being an unsuccessful baseball team before we brought on a guest who works for the Mariners and was nice enough to share his time with us.

But we're trying to be honest about things. And I wanted to get you to say where in the ballpark cardboard meg is right now you told me but just for anyone who's watching at home and uh might want to keep an eye out or wondering where your your seat fleet person is where are you in the park roughly yes the team i think probably in response to how overwhelming the response to the Sea Fleet has been, has put out a very comprehensive section by section map that shows you kind of if you are unfamiliar with the section numbers in t-mobile it is uh behind the home dugout um if you were to go down the first baseline to the end of the dugout rail i am sort of above that and i am on the aisle and i am five rows up and I have not yet found myself on the broadcast. I think that it is, um, it is just out of frame. If you're looking, you know, when they do the broadcast angle over

a left-handed hitter, I can see the guy who's at the other end of my row often. Um, so I have not yet seen myself on the broadcast, but it's nice to know I'm there, and it looks like it turned out well. There's some good dogs hanging out in that section. Can see some good pups. So I'm quite pleased, but it's a pretty full park. I've been impressed by how many teams have very, very full ballparks and also continue to be amused by how widely the proportions of anyone's cutouts vary and how weird that looks if you're examining it up close.

But yeah. All right. I meant to ask, by the way, do you feel in a mid-September frame of mind baseball-wise? Have you been able to make that adjustment at all? Yeah, because I don't really either, because I know that the season is ending soon, that the regular season is winding down. And yet, partially, obviously, because it hasn't been going very long. But even beyond that, I don't know. I just don't feel like the late season suspense. And maybe that's because of the giant playoff field and the fact that not a lot of playoff spots are actually at stake.

And yes, maybe there are division races and all that, but I'm just not sure how much that even matters this season, whether home field advantage is even real. And so that feels less consequential. And as we were talking about, there are a lot of teams that, whether they've been good or not, just sort of have their spots sewn up. And right now you only have two teams, really. The Marlins and the Brewers are the only ones that are sort of in the 50-50 range. And then you've got the Mets and the Giants are sort of between 30 and 70 in terms of playoff odds. And everyone else is either sort of out of it or in it and

it would be hard to to change that one way or another it's not impossible that it could but because of that i guess it just doesn't really feel like a pennant race to me and i don't know if it will maybe in the last week of the season or not, but not getting that sense. I just want to be able to plan our coverage. Let me plan a thing. Let me plan something baseball. Nothing can be planned. It takes a lot of work to plan the thing. Get everyone ready to go so they can anticipate the nights

where they're not going to sleep a lot. Got to let us do some work here, MLB. I'm sure that our little website being able to plan recaps is high on their list of priorities compared to the logistical challenge of orchestrating a playoff bubble. So get it together, guys. All right. Well, we will take a quick break and we'll be back with the Mariner's souvenir manager, Sean Kiney. There's nothing for you here where the guests like souvenirs.

They play with you till you're all worn out. Back where the guests like souvenirs. All right, we are back. And as promised now, we are joined by Sean Giney, the official Seattle Mariners souvenir manager, who is joining us right now from a somewhat smoke-filled T-Mobile park. Hello, Sean. How's it going? Good. How are you guys?

Thanks for having me. We are doing all right. So thanks for coming on. And I had to ask you this question myself, so I suppose I will ask it to you again in a public forum so that our listeners can hear the answer. What does a souvenir manager do both in these times in pandemic days and in more normal times? So in normal times, souvenir manager is just another name for the ballpark retail manager. I manage all of our retail locations within the ballpark. That's about 17 different kiosks and stores on a busy game day.

So my job is to make sure we have enough staff, look at attendance and see which sites it makes sense to have open on any given game and just make sure they have the right inventory, the right products to maximize our sales. And what does it mean now? Because obviously I've been to T-Mobile many, many times and there aren't fans there to buy anything from the kiosk. So what are you getting up to these days? So these days, my job on a game day is quite different. I'm assisting the authenticators. There's an authentication team that works each game and they are too busy to be

running around the ballpark tracking down home run balls. So it's my job when someone hits a home run to track down that ball and bring it to them so that they can authenticate it. Yeah. And so you told me that even in a normal season, you coordinate with authenticators to get game used products in the middle of the games, and then you sell them, the team sells them. So that would be balls or broken bats. So how do you do that? What gets saved, I guess, just in the regular course of business? And how do you assist in that process? Sure. So it's completely, we're, you know, up to the mercy of how the game flows, what balls go into the

stands or, you know, players will often toss them to fans. So anything on a given game day in normal circumstances, we, you know, we'll get a few dozen balls a game on average, but it can really vary. And broken bats, it's just whenever someone on the Mariners breaks a bat. When the opposing team breaks a bat, that stays with them and they ship it home to their stadium and will sell it through their team. So really what we're getting is any game-used baseballs that haven't left the field of play. You know, if there's a pitch in the dirt, that ball will get tossed aside to the ball boy and the ball boy will hand it to the authenticator. Anytime the ball is tossed out of play by either the umpire or the pitcher or the

catcher, those are the balls that we're getting. So usually it is a lot of pitches in the dirt, getting. So usually it is a lot of pitches in the dirt, ground outs, fly outs, and then base hits, doubles and triples. In a normal season, we would never get an authenticated home run ball because that ball leaves the field of play into an area where, you know, there's hundreds of people and the authenticators cannot say for sure that that ball, if should it re-enter the field of play, was the exact ball that was hit. So that's the thing that's unique about this year is we're able to actually authenticate home run balls for the first time because me and the authenticator can stand out there and make sure that there's no other balls. Got to establish chain of custody. run balls for the first time because me and the authenticator can stand out there and make sure that there's no other balls.

Gotta establish chain of custody. Exactly. Yep. I want to get to the logistics of collecting all of those home run balls in a moment. But before I do, I'm curious, you know, I think that we're all accustomed to if a guy comes up for his first major league game, you know, they'll take the ball that is his first hit out of play so that he can keep it and whatnot. But have there ever been any balls or broken bats or any other paraphernalia that you would think, oh, we're going to be able to,

you know, sell this as a nice souvenir for a fan here that a player has said, no, no, I actually want that thing. It's funny, that actually happened to me before I worked for the Mariners. I had previously worked for the Giants from 2012 to 2014. And there was a game in the World Series, I'm sure some people remember, where Hunter Pence hit a big base hit that shattered his bat and it hit the bat multiple times. That bat was authenticated and quickly brought up to the Giants game used store where someone was really looking to buy it, purchased it right away. And then after the fact, the Hall of Fame contacted the Giants and said they wanted that. So someone had to track down that fan and get it back from him. That is my only experience with that. The only other time it's gotten close is, you know, we'll be selling things starting in the fifth inning. If someone were to throw a no-hitter or perfect game, we hold all those things. So anytime it becomes, you know, fifth inning and we're ready to sell baseballs, broken bats. We also sell the game

use bases. If someone has a no hitter or a perfect game going, we just hold those things until that is over just to avoid those situations. So it's happened a few times in the years I've been here that we've gotten close and we've had to hold things until the ninth inning to sell. Luckily, we have not ever preemptively sold something that we had to track down and get back because either the team or Hall of Fame wanted it. And what if it's an occasion like, say, Felix's last game for the Mariners or Ichiro's last game? Do you go into overdrive and save extra stuff? Definitely. Yep. Usually at the start of a homestand, we will let the authenticators, we'll give them a heads up on what we're looking for.

If there's any, you know, special games coming up where we're going to want to collect as much as possible, or we're going to pull extra sets of bases and yeah, those things, you know, bases. And yeah, those things, you know, a good chunk of that we'll be able to sell, but it's also saved for, you know, the team will want to keep some, we'll save some to give to the player. If it's a big, you know, a momentous game for him, that usually gets set aside before it ever gets to me. And what do the authenticators do exactly to authenticate? I mean, there's an authenticator in every park and whether they slap a sticker, shiny sticker on something to say this is authentic. Do they record it in some way? Do they have to do anything else to make it official? Yeah, so there's a recording system called Trackvia that everything gets tracked through and the

authenticators are pitch tracking the whole game so that they're on top of exactly what plays each ball is associated with. So those things get recorded in that system so that that goes to the MLB authentication website where then after they put the hologram on it, the fan can go on the internet at home, go to the MLB authentication website and look up exactly which plays that ball or bat or base was affiliated with. I see. And so do you have an estimate of, say, the percentage of balls used in a typical game that do get saved and authenticated and made available in some way? During a normal season, I would say it is probably 50 to 60 percent of the balls that make it to me so that we can sell them. make it to me so that we can sell them. I would say the majority of the balls that don't make it to me are just balls that, you know, a foul ball into the stands or an inning ending, you know, ground out that the first baseman will just toss to a fan. Okay, so let's transition to 2020. And

I'm going to hit you with a couple of logistical questions. So I know you had indicated to us offline that you, in addition to tracking down home run balls, are also clearing the stands of baseballs after batting practice is my understanding of that. So how long does that take? Okay. So that's like my biggest job right now is, you know, got to get all warmed up, stretched because it's quite a task, especially with all the cardboard cutouts in the stands right now. Those have made it a challenge.

It's literally only a challenge for me. Cardboard Meg is getting in Sean's way. I'm so sorry, Sean. That's okay. And they can be distracting because some of them are pretty entertaining. So you just got to stay focused. And what's happening is, so like in right field where, you know, it's row after row of cardboard cutouts. Someone will hit a home run in batting practice. Normally it bounces around, rolls down some rows, and it's just on the cement

for me to pick up. But with more cutouts, their cutouts seem to be absorbing the blows really well. So if it hits a cutout, it'll just be sitting in their lap. That's so funny. Or the other thing that's happening, which is harder to find is if it does bounce, they're hitting the back of the head. So the cutouts and then lodging behind the cutouts, which are those ones are hard to find. And you just have to really take your time going through each row where there are cutouts so that you don't miss any. And has your strategy for positioning yourself in the outfield changed at all as time has gone on, either for batting practice or for regular games? Are you studying sort of the spray charts of incoming hitters so that you have a general sense of where their home runs are going to go? Or are you just

sort of starting in center field and hoping for an equal distribution? That's a great question because it has changed. Originally, we were sectioned kind of right in the middle of the foul pole and where the batter's eye starts. So all the right field bleachers, we just were positioned right in the middle of there. That's because the majority of balls we get are going to go in that area because we are not allowed to authenticate any balls that go into the bullpens unfortunately and that's because one I'm a tier three employee so I can't go down there anyways and two because there are balls scattered throughout there the entire time so there would be no way to know for sure which ball was which so the

right field stands is our moneymaker. That's where we're getting the majority of balls. But I've found that there's just better angles at T-Mobile Park where your vantage point is better. So I sit closer to center field. That way I can sort of when a home run goes to right field, I can see better what row it lands in. And then I'm also closer to center field or Edgar's Cantina is the other place we can get balls. I'm closer to there if I need to go over to left field.

And you, as you mentioned, have had up close and personal interaction with the seat fleet, the fans. And I'm curious, how well are they all holding up? Because I imagine, you know, we've watched Mariners games and I've seen a couple of them get dinged by a home run ball. Are they are they soldiering on or any of them bound for the injured list? Have there has there been a need to replace any of them? No, I I wouldn't know if they've been replaced, but they are holding up miraculously well, from what I can tell. I've watched balls, you know, line drive home runs that have to be over 110 miles per hour, drill them right in the face, and they have a little give to them because they're secured on the arms of the seats, but it's not really, it's not zip-tied to

the seat, so if it hits it in the face, the bottom just kind of shifts out a little bit. So yeah, they're taking the beating quite well. I'm very impressed. And have any home run balls eluded you thus far? Have you been unable to find them or have they been inaccessible for some reason? Almost, yes. Some have been inaccessible just because they've landed in the bullpen, unfortunately. bullpen unfortunately but the closest thing i got to a ball eluding me was this last weekend when we were playing the rangers joey gallo hit a ball into the third deck that i could not tell

it was the third deck from my vantage point so i quickly ran up to the hit it here cafe and couldn't find it and then i actually got a text from someone else, another Mariner employee who was working the game who told me it was in the third deck. So I got up there in time to snag it. And yeah, that one was a very impressive home run. It wasn't even in the first row of the third deck. It was, I believe it was in the fourth row that we found the ball in. So quite a poke. Yeah, I was gonna ask you if you have anyone else sort of with a different vantage who's able to serve as a spotter for you to tell you, oh, you got to go up to section whatever. Or if you're

really just relying on your own visual assessment of the home runs trajectory to kind of track down where it falls. No, yeah, at this point, people sort of have an idea of what we're doing out there. So I've had a couple employees, ballpark ops employees, text me when they see a home run ball that, you know, they can help out with some of those people are tier two. So for instance, if a ball goes into the pen area, not the bullpen, the pen area, which is a center field viewing area for fans, typically we can authenticate the ball if it goes in there because the authenticator can keep an eye on it, but I can't personally go down there because it's within the area of tier one players. So I have to have, I'll text my tier two person, my hookup,

who will go get that for us, which we really appreciate because that seems to be Kyle Lewis's favorite spot to hit them this year. What is the atmosphere, the environment like at the park? I mean, you're used to working on game days and having a full crowd with fans being loud, and now it must feel like you have almost a private performance for you. So what is it like? I'm sure you've gotten used to it over time, but it must have been quite jarring at first, and I just haven't been in a ballpark in a while, so I want to live vicariously through your experience. For sure's it's very surreal it took some getting used to at first mostly just because the game is so loud like

the popping of the catcher's glove the pitchers throw hard it turns out and that's really loud and when someone you know barrels a ball it's uh if you're not paying attention it will wake you up and yeah i i love that you know the video team who does an awesome job they're playing videos that feels like it's just for me in between innings uh we still have the seventh inning stretch which i absolutely stand up and sing along to that's fun but yeah it's very very surreal being there with no one cheering and just hearing some speakers sort of pipe in some crowd noise at different times. That's been quite different from what I'm used to walking around the concourse on a normal game day. actual live innings of baseball, major league baseball viewed this season. I'm curious, have you been tracking your steps? I would imagine that if you were training for any kind of distance running, or if you had a pedometer that this would be a banner year for tracking steps. Yeah, I have an Apple watch that tracks steps. And actually, I do I get a ton, I average about 15,000. But in a normal season,

my job is to just constantly be walking around and checking on my different sites. So I have been getting fewer steps than I normally get, because I was averaging about 18,000 last year, I think. There's a lot of walking in my job, which I like walking around the stadium. And do you think that the crowd noise, the fake crowd noise sounds more real on TV or in the ballpark? Because I have no basis for a comparison. And obviously most of the audience is watching at home on TV and they are sort of the intended recipients. But also the players want to have that atmosphere and feel like it's a real game in some sense. So I wonder whether it's kind of calibrated more for remote viewing or for in the

ballpark. Like if you closed your eyes while you were walking around out there, would you be fooled for even a second? Yeah, I would say it probably is working better for TV. When I've watched games on TV, it almost seems normal when you're, you know, just sort of half paying attention. At the ballpark, it, I will not mistake it for actual crowd noise, partly because of just, you know, it's a constant same decibel, it seems like, and I'm sitting in the outfield, and I believe they're only piping in the noise on the other half of the stadium. So it's like I have speakers right above me that never seem to have any crowd noise piped in. So yeah, sounds slightly different than in-person actual people cheering when you're sitting in the outfield.

And has the growth of the seat fleet changed your perception of the park at all? When it was first started, you know, it had sort of the typical behind home plate and sort of down the lines. But it seems like every time I turn on a Mariners broadcast this year, there are more of those cardboard cutouts. It's a pretty impressive array of them. Has it made it feel full or just the fact that you're seeing them from behind so often kind of shattered the illusion for you? No, I think it actually, when I'm watching the game, it has made it the optical illusion that the stadium actually is somewhat full. Obviously, it doesn't look like my section has any real people in it. But when it's in your peripheral view, it definitely is an improvement from a completely empty stadium, I would say. And yes, they have added them

continuously because we continue to sell them. It's awesome how the Seed Fleet has done. How many people are actually in the park other than the players? So people like you, personnel, staff, security, whoever it is actually there. Because I don't have a great sense of that. You sometimes see isolated figures when you get a wide shot of the stands. But there are a lot fewer shots of the stands now, I think, for obvious reasons. You don't get the in-between pitch

crowd reactions and the faces and the building suspense and all of that. Most of the focus is on the field and on the players, which I am fine with. I think maybe is actually an improvement, but it does mean that I don't have a great sense of how many people are standing around or doing something out there. Yeah, I think the majority of people in the ballpark are made up of the two teams and the staff. There's obviously security around. Those guys I'll see walking around. That's about it in terms of people who I see in the outfield. I'll see security and I'll see our housekeeping team and that's it. Who's out there? I see baseball ops people. They'll sit behind home plate and watch the game. Obviously the media is there, but not a lot of people in the outfield with me. How do you get this job? And is there someone who does this job for every team?

Because I looked and just, you know, your title, I think, is if not unique, at least unusual. It is. Okay. So, but I assume there are people doing these duties, but how did you get to this point? Yeah. So out of college, I was just looking for a part-time job while I searched for other jobs. That was, again, in 2012. I started with the Giants in their giant stugout store, just working as a sales associate. That obviously was a pretty fun season. And so I stuck on after that, after our second World Series championship. And I just, you know, worked my way up from there, became a supervisor, and then moved up to the Pacific Northwest

in 2015, where I spent a year working for the Rainiers. And that was a lot of fun. And then came to the Mariners in 2016 as a retail manager, assistant manager to start and then started this position three seasons ago. So the souvenir manager title is unique. My main duties are a retail manager. But I think, you know, because we also deal with the game use and autograph memorabilia, that's sort of where that came to be. And other teams don't all have this because we do all of our merchandise in-house here at the Mariners. And we're just one of a handful of teams that still do that. A lot of teams are run by third-party companies, like we are with our vendors inside with Centerplate, where they run all the food inside. Some teams also have them run the merchandise, but we do it all in-house here at the Mariners.

So if someone wants to purchase your handiwork to buy one of these balls that you have tracked down, how do they do that? On our auction website, all of our home run balls are being put up on there. All of them are getting put up on the auction website. You won't see every single home run ball we get right after we get it because we don't want to flood our own market of home run balls to sell. So we are holding some for later, but we will always have a couple up on our website. And this just occurred to me, are you able to tell a home run ball by the sight of it? I mean, is there usually a clear mark? Is it deformed or scuffed in some way?

Can you tell by sight? I feel like, so the main way to tell, it's very obvious to tell one from a batting practice ball. I feel like what they're doing, at least this year, is they're not rubbing any of the mud on any of the batting practice balls. So those balls are very pearly white. So just telling a ball that got used in a game, it does look quite different from a BP ball. And I'm kind of surprised the home runs, most of them look perfectly intact when they get to me. There have been a few that will be scuffed or it will, you know, it'll have the black paint from the batter's bat. But most of them are perfectly intact. Fenway, Citi Field, and T-Mobile, they installed humidors this season, but I don't know what the effect of that is. I'm not sure whether that means more homers for you or fewer because it depends on the atmosphere and how the balls are stored and how they were stored before. And obviously it's not Chase Field or Coors Field where they're necessarily trying to keep the home run rate

down there. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Well, we will link to where people can buy those balls if they're interested, and they can find you on Twitter at Sean underscore Guiney, G-U-I-N-E-Y. And it was a pleasure to talk to you. You have a unique job in baseball or at least a unique title in baseball. We have now talked to 100% of the souvenir managers for Major League Baseball teams. Thanks, Sean. All right. Yeah, thank you guys. All right, that will do it for today. Sean just sent me a picture of the Gallo home run ball that he mentioned way up in the third deck. So you can see where he got it and it has its fancy

authentication sticker on it. I will link to that on the show page as well. Thanks again to him for coming on and to you for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Sean, Michael Hunter, Sam Raker, Cameron McSorley, and Dominique Banfield. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify

and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance.

We had a holiday week this week, so it's going to be a short podcast week too. Perhaps we will do a bonus episode for you a little later this month. But for now, we hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week. $20 in a souvenir Anything's worth trying