Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1612: Strength in Phone Numbers

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the status of the designated hitter and answer a listener email with a Stat Blast about hitters who’ve homered from every spot in the lineup, then (23:11) bring on Cleveland life skills coordinator Jen Wolf to talk about her career path in baseball, what a life skills coordinator […]

And we wait, we wait, oh we wait for you to rest, and we wait, we wait. Hello and welcome to episode 1612 of Effectively Wild, a Fanagraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fanagraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. We're just waiting. We're all waiting. The whole country is waiting as we speak at least. Probably going to be doing a lot of waiting this winter in a baseball sense. But in the short term, we're all just kind of in limbo at the moment. Ben, what a, what a comp, what a segue, what a transition. Thanks.

Yeah. I'm impressed. Well, while we wait, we will try to keep people entertained. And one way we will do that today is by talking to Jen Wolf, who is a life skills coordinator for Cleveland. She works with their minor leaguers, teaches them how to do things off the field. A lot of things that, frankly, I think I could use some help with. I'm not sure that my life skills are particularly up to par in some areas, but I don't have a life skills coordinator, unfortunately for me. So we'll be talking to Jen about her work and her career. She and I actually go back a bit because we went to the same college. But we'll talk about how she got to this point and also a group text that she started a year or two ago for women who are working in baseball operations, which was recently the subject of a story by James Wagner in the New York Times,

which brought it to a lot of people's attention. So that'll be a good chat that we will get to soon. Before that, I figured I'd bring up a little bit of news, non-news, semi-news reported by Jeff Passan, which is about the status of the designated hitter in the National League. I think we all just sort of assumed that once it was in place, it would stay in place. And I still assume that, but it is not official right now. That is up in the air too, and we are waiting to see what will happen there. So Passan says, players want it, sources said, but owners want the players to agree to expanded playoffs

for the 2021 season in exchange. Understandably, the players don't find that to be a particularly equitable trade. The complicating factor is that most front offices would love it. Going back to pitchers hitting after a full season in which they didn't doesn't register right, particularly when the issue is going to be adjudicated for good in a new collective bargaining agreement after the 2021 season. Some executives believe the Universal DH will stick around even if the MLB PA doesn't agree to the expanded playoffs. What MLB would trade for it is unclear. So it's sort of a strange situation because everyone wants it, but it's something that the players understandably would want to extract something in exchange for that, even though they want it too. And the owners also want it.

Like everyone kind of wants it, I think. Like the owners want the expanded playoffs. So they might want that more than the players. Although, frankly, I think the players are probably not all that against that either. So it's kind of a negotiation, except that both sides sort of want the same thing. And so the owners are holding out on the DH, the players are holding out on the expanded playoffs. But I assume they will work something out, even though that doesn't really seem like it would be an equitable exchange. Because when it comes to like potential revenue

and the payoff, their expanded playoffs is a big windfall, and the DH is not as big a windfall. Well, and in addition to the windfall, the expansion of the postseason, regardless of the form that takes, but especially if it is something as radical as what we saw this year, comes with some very serious competitive implications.

And so I think that the Players Association, and I'm sure that they're aware of this, would be well served to think really carefully about what sort of safeguards and bumpers they need to put in place to ensure that teams are properly incentivized to win as many games as possible, and hopefully by extension to invest in payroll in a way that will help them to be as competitive as they can be because it's very hard to unring that bell and to work back from it as we've seen in prior cba negotiations once you give away gains it's really hard to get them back so i think that that jeff's take that some sort of intermediate solution might be on the table is probably what we will likely see because, you know, the universal DH and the playoffs and all of that are likely to be issues of bargaining in the broader CBA negotiation.

So I could see sort of highlight some of the differences and gaps between what front offices would prefer from a baseball perspective and what their ownership groups are keen on from a profitability perspective. So I can't imagine that anyone in an NL front office is like, oh, yeah, get those pitchers back to the plate. Right. Yeah. Because it was terrible. They were bad and this was better. I wonder how many fans are thinking that. Even fans who were against the universal DH and wanted pitchers to keep hitting after a couple months of seeing DHs. Are you still feeling that way? I don't know. I mean, personally, it's not something I missed, but I was already kind of in that camp of pitchers

just aren't up to snuff as hitters anymore. This is ridiculous. It's two different jobs. They are clearly outclassed and overmatched here, and they're not even trying, and there aren't really incentives for them to try to become competent hitters not that they could at this point when everything is so specialized so I was already in the bring in the universal dh camp but many people were not obviously like you know a lot of national league fans were not and so I wonder if they still feel that way or if their resistance has been broken down a bit by seeing it because that's's really, I think, how it becomes normalized, how American League fans got used to it and got to like it even,

is that they just saw it all the time and you get used to it and it's fine. So I don't know that it was a great loss. And it would be weird to go back to that for a year, like to switch and then switch back. Not that that would be like close to the weirdest thing about 2020 or baseball in 2020 even. So I guess if that were just like a one-year blip and then it went back for a year and then it switched back again, stranger things have happened. There have been all sorts of baseball rules changes that have been applied and then removed and then applied again. But it just seems like there was already so much momentum behind it that we might as well make it codified and official if we can.

Yeah, I think that there's an opportunity for everyone to really get what they want, except the most sort of strident nl pitchers hitting diehards front office folks get what they want players get what they want we get a better on-field product it's just everybody should keep the dh and then you can work out the particulars of where that fits relative to other ownership priorities and player priorities in the next cba but i think you're right that people would understand if there was some back and forth here because this season was just so strange. And it is, you know, the next season, for one thing,

might end up being perfectly odd on its own and is preceding a CBA negotiation. So I think that people understand sort of how this all works together. But it seems just as easy to do another sort of stopgap until we get through the CBA, which I'm going to optimistically talk about as if it's a thing that we're assured of when we know that that is not true either. Yeah. And the DH was part of MLB's proposal to the players last year. It was part of

the owner's proposal. So it's not like something they're against. The players are maybe more in favor of it. In theory, it allows them to make more money because more established veteran players who might not have a position in the field, they can still get a DH job. But everyone kind of wants it. And I think part of it, at least they said, was something like protecting pitchers because of the short ramp up to the season and everything. But I don't know. That didn't make all that much sense to me. It just seemed like everyone was kind of on board with it at this point. And I think given all the concerns about the lack of contact and strikeouts, it didn't help that much.

The MLB strikeout rate still went up for the 15th consecutive season despite pitchers not hitting which i was interested to see if that would happen because i knew it was going to be close and it was fairly close but it still happened anyway you just can't stop the ascension of the strikeout rate but if you were to put pitchers back in that would accelerate it even more and i don't think anyone really wants that we do get a lot of emails about like alternate ways of implementing the dh like the proposal that has been bandied about to tie the starting pitcher to the dh so that you have the dh as long as your starting pitcher is in the game and then if the starters remove do you lose the dh which maybe helps from a strategic sense and makes these

decisions more complex and preserves that aspect, but also maybe gives teams more incentive to leave starters in the game, which I think we all agree is a good thing. So I kind of like that idea. I don't have a problem with it, but I just haven't heard much discussion of it as a serious proposal. And it just seems like after having the basic standard DH for decades in the AL and the same being implemented in the NL, it just doesn't seem like there's much momentum toward that or that anyone in the league is seriously discussing it. have anything to add dh for all yeah although we had we had to in our depth charts and all of the roster resource pages we reverted it back to pinch hitting ah for now for now everyone we'll fix it again but like we can't have a we can't have a dh there when we don't know can't be can't be doing that no yeah and the nldhs let's see, what was their final line? How much worse did they hit? I'm going to look at the FanGraphs League splits as DH.

They're faster than me. It's very embarrassing on my own website. In the AL, DHs hit 229, 314, 410. That was a 97 wrc plus and in the nl they had a 96 wrc plus they hit 235 319 412 so there didn't end up being a really big difference in that despite the fact that nl teams weren't really able to plan for it but that does pertain to what you were saying about there being competitive implications for this, and that's why they need to figure this out sometime soon because whether you have expanded playoffs

and whether you have a DH affects how you construct your roster and affects what players you're going to try to sign. And I think maybe having more playoff spots disincentivizes teams to spend and try to sign. And I think maybe having more playoff spots disincentivizes teams to spend and try to get better because if you're decent, you feel like, well, we're good enough to get in and then who knows what will happen after that. But like for DH type players who are on the market, like it's pretty important to them and to teams to know whether they need to fill that slot.

So they will have to figure that out sometime soon. Yeah, it dramatically alters. Well, it potentially dramatically alters Nelson Cruz's market. You would imagine that like Carlos Santana might have an easier time. It might end up altering some of the non-tender decisions that get made. Although it might also, you know, those same players who are sort of on the bubble starting to get a little bit expensive first base dh only guys might still get let go but now they have more homes to go to right so it it does have a an impact i think that some of that is going to be

blunted by the fact that the the top of that market which is really just Nelson Cruz, I guess, is probably going to do fine. And there is sort of a certain degree of interchangeability between some of the first base DH thumper types. But yeah, it makes a difference. So they should decide, which means that they will decide the day before the season. So I have a quick stat blast for you all. This is inspired by listener Scott Good from Searcy, Arkansas, who sent in a question, which you will hear after the stat blast

song. It's ordered by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Deist-a-plast. Okay, so Scott says, Last week, a player in Japanese baseball named Ikihiro Kiyota of the Chibolote Marines became the 13th player in NPB history to hit a home run from every spot in the lineup. And I think he means on a career basis, not in a single season. I wondered how common this was in MLB. How many times has it happened

and who was the last player to accomplish it and thought this might make a good stat blast? Well, you're right, Scott, it does. So I sent this to our sometime stat blast consultant, Adam Ott, who is a listener and is good with the RetroSheet database. And I will just read you what Adam wrote here, and I will also put the spreadsheet he sent online

because it's very comprehensive, lots of good info in here. So Adam says, this one is pretty interesting. There have been at least 349 players to hit a home run from every lineup spot in their career in MLB history going back to 1918. So there have been 13, according to Scott, in NPP, 349 in MLB. And I guess that's a product of MLB history being a lot longer, a lot more teams, more players, more home runs being hit probably throughout most of MLB history. And I don't know, maybe there's more moving around in the lineup. I'm not sure about that. But many more players have done it.

Adam continues, the number of players doing so has increased recently, with 2019 shattering the record and having 21 players finish the career task so that's again not surprising that we've seen more and more players complete this lately because there have been more and more home runs hit and we've also seen like everyone can hit them now it's not just power hitters or people who traditionally would have fit the power hitter profile. Everyone hits for power these days, and so lots of players have checked this off. Adam says 2020 had two players hit a home run from their ninth career lineup spot. That was Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Luke Voigt. Luke Voigt, who hit the most homers in the majors, also hit one from his ninth career lineup spot.

Three players have hit a home run from all nine lineup spots in a single season, with 25 more hitting a home run from eight different lineup spots. So that's a pretty decent trivia question, I guess. The three players in major league history who have hit a home run from all nine lineup spots. Not going to ask you to try to guess that because it seems pretty impossible. Yeah, I definitely would have had no idea, but I will spoil it for everyone. It is Steve Finley. He did it in 2003, or he became the first player ever to do it when he did it in 2003.

Then Ian Happ did it in 2017, and Brian Goodwin did it in 2019. Stop it. Really? Yeah, apparently. And Adam says, I looked into the order of the lineup spots. I didn't even ask him to do this. He's just going above and beyond. Yeah.

So of the 349 players, only two, Elvis Andrus and Ben Zobrist, took the same path to get there, the same path through lineup spots. So Andrus and Zobrist went 9-2-8-6-7-5-4-3-1. They are the only duo to have had the same path. That's pretty interesting. He says overall the fourth spot cleanup is more likely to be toward the end and seven is more likely to be toward the beginning. So he included like the average position in the progression for each lineup spot. And so like the average for the cleanup spot is like 6.5. So that's the average if you say that, you know, some guys hit their first homer in the cleanup spot

other guys completed it with their homer in the cleanup spot the average for the cleanup spot is 6.5 and as Adam mentioned 7 the 7 spot is the average is 4 so that's early and overall it looks like for the most part I guess the

the middle of the order comes later so 3 and 4 have the two highest averages and then like 7 and 8 For the most part, I guess the middle of the order comes later. So three and four have the two highest averages, and then like seven and eight and six are lower. I guess that makes sense because generally you would probably start your career lower in the lineup. There are some top prospect slugger types who come in and yeah immediately are you know penciled in third or fourth in the lineup but typically you have to hit your way there so you start out somewhere lower and then you you end up in the cleanup spot and i guess for most of baseball history that has been the most prestigious spot you know reserved for the true slugger i suppose so you really have to have quite a career resume to get there so that's uh what you would expect i suppose but pretty interesting so adam

sent a spreadsheet with everything here players who've hit a home run from all nine spots in their career sorted by the most recent players who've hit a homer from eight or nine in the same season, a plot showing how many have done it each season. And it is steeply climbing in the past few years. And then the average figures that I was just talking about. So I will link to all of that from the show page. And thanks to Adam for the research. And thanks to Scott for the question. Where would your preferred preferred where in the lineup would you like to hit a home run ben i mean to be clear if you or i hit a home run off major league pitching i think we would not care where it came from because i'll take it yeah yeah we'd

probably be so surprised that we would fail to complete our home run trot yes probably but do you think that there would be a place in the lineup that would be more emotionally or psychically satisfying than any other well i guess i'd rather be hitting at the top or in the middle of the lineup because that would mean i'm better at baseball right but also if i hit one of the nine splatters something like the i don't know the boost that you give to fans might be bigger in that spot because you're not expecting that much out of that player it's like oh it's the number nine hitter and these days again like everyone hits 20 homers but historically speaking that's the the weak hitter that's where the pitchers went when pitchers used to go somewhere

so maybe like the the difference between expectations and reality when it comes to like the reaction in the ballpark, probably greatest when it's the lowest in the lineup. Yeah. And I think that your teammates would be super jazzed for you. Yeah. Yeah. Look at you. Yep.

Hitting it in the nine hole. That's great. They'd be so excited. They'd probably clap and they'd expect you to look sheepish like oh i can't believe i did it yeah yeah and if you're trying to stave off like leaving the lineup altogether like sure when you're in the number nine spot there's nowhere for you to go i mean you can make a whole career out of just being a number nine hitter if you're a good glove guy or you know defense first catcher or something it's

fine but for some players when you're in the number nine spot it's like oh i'm one spot away from the bench and therefore hitting a home run maybe uh makes it a little less likely that i will lose my lineup spot so there's that too maybe i maybe i take it back then because stakes are so high we We have such stakes anyway. Such high stakes. Such high stakes. Can I just say a quick word in favor of, I don't think defense is quite what I mean here.

Get a group chat, everyone. Get a group chat. It doesn't matter what your job is. It doesn't matter who the people are. I mean, it does matter because the quality of your group chat is going to be directly proportional to who's in it. But just I think we do better

when we have people who understand us, who we can, if nothing else, say things to that we might otherwise put on Twitter to our detriment. So get a group chat if you can because you'll save yourself from embarrassing confessions of your true personality. And you'll feel good to have some pals who know what your business is and can help you navigate it. So group chats, they make a big difference.

Yeah, I have a little group chat going right now, sort of an election-centric group chat, kind of a coping group chat with some friends from college. So that has been helpful. It's been a bit of a bright spot this week. So yeah, I'll second that advice. Okay, so we will take a quick break now and we'll be right back with Jane Wolfe. I'll be your shelter. Rainy days and Mondays get you down. with Jane Wolfe. Gathering this together. Gathering it together. Gathering this together. Gathering it together.

All right, we are joined now by Jen Wolf, who is a life skills coordinator in Cleveland's farm system. Hey, Jen, how's it going? I'm doing well. How are you guys? Doing well. So we met in 2009 when we were at college together and we took the same class in college with Professor Chandra Manning, who taught the Baseball in American Society course, which was quite influential for me and maybe for you also. And we worked together on a baseball prospectus event in 2009 at Georgetown. So how did you get from there to where you are now with Cleveland? Because you've had a number of different positions in media and with different teams before you landed with Cleveland.

Yeah, for sure. So first of all, thank you guys for having me. I'm really excited to be here. So I actually, my baseball career started before I met you. When I graduated high school, I had met Lou Gorman, the former GM of the Red Sox, among other roles in baseball at my local bagel shop where I worked on weekends and had told him I was interested in working in baseball. And he gave me a name to contact. And I ended up interning in the fan services department with the Boston Red Sox. So in college, when we met, I was interning or student working, I guess, in the Georgetown athletic department. So not baseball, but was doing a lot with basketball, football, and lacrosse.

And then after graduation, interned for the Nationals in their marketing department. And then following that, went to the winter meetings, like many job seekers do, and ended up with an internship with the New York Mets in their baseball ops department. So did that for a year, then went over to Major League Baseball and spent time in their international baseball ops department, both in New York, in the Dominican Republic, where I did a lot with kind of contract approval and setting up the registration process, which was kind of the first steps towards potentially having an international draft at some point in the future, but bringing kind of more order, I guess, to the international signing process. So I did that for a year and then went back to the Mets and worked in their

player development department for about six years before leaving and coming to the Indians. Can you talk about the transition from being on more of a sort of fan and marketing side to actual baseball operations? And I don't say that to be dismissive of the people who do business side stuff, but it is a shift in role. And so I'm curious, what motivated you to move in that direction? And how did you find that process of trying to get more involved in actual baseball ops? Yeah, so it's definitely something that I always knew I wanted to do. I always knew I wanted to be on the baseball side of things. But I just figured, you know, I'm going to get my foot in the door, whatever way that I can. And I would say that it wasn't until kind of the end of college that I really kind of

zoned in on that I had thought about maybe doing PR as well, but just really wanted to have my hands involved in something going on on the field. At the time, I didn't really understand fully how front offices were structured. And, you know, knew there were scouts knew there was front office, but didn't really understand the ins and outs. And it wasn't until my baseball ops internship at the Mets that I really got to see, you know, the international side of things, the minor league ops or player development, the scouting draft, you know, and how it all fit together. And I think there's a stigma against people on the business side, which I don't think should be there. But I think that there's, especially in certain organizations, a very firm division between the two sides. And for me, I used my time, especially at the Nationals, to really try to show that

I was more than just, you know, I majored in business, but I also speak Spanish. And I wanted to show that I could do more than just kind of the marketing side. And I was actually doing a lot of writing for the Nationals magazine and the little playbills that they give out at each game. And so I was able to kind of showcase some of my deeper knowledge of baseball through that, similar to when people come from fan graphs or other publications and move into front offices. But I think, honestly, what helped a bit, and it sounds kind of counterintuitive, but when I went

to my first winter meetings, I think I got a lot of looks because I'm a woman. And I think a lot of teams said, you know, Hey, there's this woman that's interested in baseball ops internships. Let's, let's talk to her. And I think if my name was Jonathan instead of Jennifer, you know, I wouldn't have necessarily got the same looks. Now, I think a lot of those were kind of token interviews, though I can't say for sure. But it was 10 minutes, a half hour, whatever, that somebody else wasn't getting. And so I always felt that that was FaceTime and I needed to take advantage of it and knock their socks off, essentially. And I guess it worked.

And you talked about some of the life skills that you've picked up in the process of working your way into your current position and that have been useful to you. What does a life skills coordinator do? Because we probably haven't talked as much as we should on the show about that side of things, which is really important. So what sort of life skills do you impart and how do you do that? Yeah, so it's a lot of kind of the off-field side of things that, you know, transitioning to being a professional athlete. And I think that most teams cover a lot of what I do, whether it's helping to open bank accounts, getting guys to the grocery store, helping them with housing. We use a lot of host families, especially at the lower levels. It's a lot of those things that end up happening, but we just try to make it more streamlined and

intentional. So I'm not just going to take you to the bank and help you open your bank account, or I'm not going to delegate an intern to go do that. I'm going to teach you what the difference between a debit card and a credit card is, and a savings account and a checking account. And we're going to talk about making a budget. And should you set up alerts on your phone so you know how much you're spending, whatever it may be. So just kind of trying to dig in a little more on that and not just get the task done, but really understand why you're doing it. I also have some phenomenal co-workers on the education and mental skills side who are super helpful and nutrition side as well. Our dieticians are phenomenal. And so we all work together on a lot of this stuff because a lot of it crosses over different

domains. And what's really fun about my job is that I get to work with not only so many of our players, but so many of our staff as well and finding ways to better communicate something, create better routines, whatever it may be. And having that support and that collaboration across the domains is really, really useful and really gratifying as well. What are some of the biggest challenges that you see players having as they're making that transition? And I'm curious if the answer to that question has maybe shifted over time, because it seems like, you know, Cleveland is a great example of this, but you guys aren't alone.

Organizations are making this side of the game more of a priority so that they're setting their players up for success. So do you find that there are consistent issues that players seem to struggle with? And are those changing over time? Or are they staying relatively the same? Because at the end of the day, you're dealing with, you know, young men who are trying to learn how to become professionals and adults at the same time. Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of them are pretty consistent as far as kind of the adulting things, you know, learning how to live on your own and keep your apartment clean. And we're fortunate enough to have player housing right across the street from our facility, which is great. But you know, it's up to the guys to keep their rooms clean and to keep it nice so that we can continue using it and continue, you know, for the next group

of guys to come in, especially when you go from like extended to instructional league and things like that. But I think what's interesting is the guys who come in with agents and the guys who don't, you know, sometimes agents will help them set them up with different financial accounts and stuff like that. And if you don't have a, maybe you had an agent that helped you sign, but doesn't really help out when you're in the lower levels, that can be very tough. You know, the salaries aren't great at the minor league level. And I think that's something that we know as a fact, and it's hopefully improving. And, but just, you know, learning how to budget that learning, you know, your bonus doesn't last forever and almost, you know, what to do with your bonus. We're never going to tell somebody

exactly what to do, but just how to think about it. And then for the Latin players, there's the obvious, you know, coming to a new country, speaking a new language and getting used to the culture and the way of doing things here. And I think that's something that is so crucial having lived abroad in the Dominican Republic and gone the other way. I've been through kind of that culture shock and I've been through that transition. And I always say, you know, I had a college degree and I spoke Spanish before I got there. And, you know, these kids are coming who haven't finished high school. And I say kids because a lot of them still are kids. You know, they're under 18 and they don't speak the language. They don't really understand the culture. And our education department does a phenomenal job, like I said, with getting their English up and ready before they get here. But it's also important to let them know what to expect when they get here. And just culturally, there's so many different things that they don't necessarily experience back home. So they're learning to be adults in a new country. So it's kind of just like a double whammy. Sure. And I was going to ask,

you know, how you interface with the coaching staff once these guys get sent out to affiliates, because sometimes, you know, they're in, they're not only in a new country, but they're not necessarily in major urban centers. There might not be big Spanish speaking populations. You know, there's, there's adjusting to a new country and then there's adjusting to the particular place that they're going to play affiliated ball. So how does that interface work for you guys? So I think what helps is that we have the apartments for our players here in Arizona. And so they at least get a sense of what it's like to live on their own. And then we also have host families at our lower levels. And so we try to be intentional with how we're assigning the

host families and not putting two players with more beginner English. We want them to be able to communicate. We want to set them up for success. And our coaches are aware of this and are very helpful as well and work closely with our education staff on better ways to communicate and things like that. and things like that. And this year must have presented some unique challenges for you and the players as it did for all of us. So games weren't going on this year. Did players mostly stick around or did they all go home? And if so, if they weren't where you were, were you still able to help them? How did your role differ this season from a normal season? Yeah, my role actually changed in a few different ways. We sent most of our players home, which I think a lot of teams did, but a lot of teams were unable to send their

Venezuelan players home. And I think that was a challenge for everyone because right around the time when Major League Baseball shut everything down, Venezuela shut their borders to the U.S. So, you know, that was just kind of another challenge. But one of the, I guess, silver linings of all this is with the cancellation of the minor league season and the suspension of minor league contracts, players were eligible to receive unemployment benefits. So I was able to help with some of that, which was good. I think, you know, the guys all needed it and deserved it. But also with everything that happened in this country around social justice and whatnot, we were able to have some

really good discussions with our players about it and really engage them on topics that I never expected to engage baseball players on or, you know, just kind of athletes in general. And we weren't all together, but we were able to, you know, thanks to technology, have discussions and raise issues and make sure that our players have space to process what was going on. Because we knew in a regular season, you'd be in the clubhouse, you'd be able to talk to your teammates and your coaches about this. And so wanted to offer that same space. And what about this offseason? How are things changing? And I guess, generally, how do you kind of interface with the players over the winter as they go to their respective homes? Maybe they play some winter ball? Are you kind of interface with the players over the winter as they go to their respective homes? Maybe they play some winter ball.

Are you kind of checking in with them and in constant contact with them? Yes. In a normal season, I would, or normal year, I guess, we would have programs going on here in Arizona and in the Dominican Republic. And so I would travel to both, be able to interface with the players that we had in those programs. This year, we just wrapped up a program here. So I was basically, you know, going back in for a month, but we are not sending any staff down to the DR or very much staff to the DR. So it's a lot of WhatsApp and Zoom calls. The importance of WhatsApp has been highlighted not only in your professional role, but in the

networking that you've done for yourself. James Wagner wrote a really lovely piece on your support group chat. As a woman working in baseball media, I also have a supportive group chat and I know their value. I'm curious, you know, for the folks who haven't read that piece, how you've seen the ranks in front offices change in terms of their diversity, both of gender and gender identities and race, and then what you have done to help yourself and other women working in baseball sort of navigate a work environment that is still largely dominated by men. Yeah, so thank you for that. That was definitely a very, you know, grateful and honored for that article that James wrote and that it was able to bring to light a lot of things that a lot of us women in sports around sports have gone through and the feedback I got from that was just so incredible. And I'm glad that people felt like they were heard, which to me was the most important thing. When I got into the game, and I will 100% admit this, I was definitely one of those women that was like, there's a quota, there can only be, you know, one of me or, you know, if there's other women around, they're a

threat. And I soon realized that that's not the case. And I, you know, there's no quota for any sort of gender, race, ethnicity, nothing like that. It really should, at the end of the day, be about what you bring to the table. But that said, the path is much easier for a white male than it is for any other group. And I want to also say that I'm highly aware that, you know, I come to this with a certain amount of privilege. You know, I am a woman, but I'm, you know, from the Northeast and where I went to school and whatnot, you know, if it wasn't for my gender, I would fall into kind of that super privileged category in baseball. But that said, being a woman does make me somewhat unique and brings

its own challenges. I think that what is kind of a double edged sword is as the game has gotten more into analytics, it's opened things up for people that haven't specifically played baseball. But that said, if you look at who's coming out of, you know, statistics programs and who tends to be more in programming and things like that, it is still white males. So, you know, on the one hand, it may have made it slightly easier for somebody like me who does not have a stats or analytics background, but there are still challenges. And I think what I've noticed in the last few years is, you know, when I first got in the industry, women were just trying to survive, I felt like, and it felt very isolating. And there were a few women such as Kim Ming and Jean Afterman and Raquel Ferreira who were in it,

but they just felt like they were like so much ahead of where I was. And it was just kind of me. I didn't see a lot of people that looked like me around as I've, you know, I've been in this a little longer than I'd like to admit, but I've seen more women join the game, which is awesome. But it's also been an attitude shift where we, we want to help each other. And a couple of years ago at the winter meetings was the first time I had other women ask me like, Hey, did you have any really good female interns, you know, specifically trying to help other women, which I think is phenomenal. And I also just felt like there was support kind of at the entry level to get more diversity in the game. And then there's support at the at the executive level, you know, the ceiling rule and things like that. But there's nothing really in the middle. And how are we going to get to that point where we're the next Kimming or Jean Afterman if we're not staying in the game? And so my thought and

goal kind of with the WhatsApp group was kind of to help create that support and help keep women in the game and not feel like they were isolated. And I've been fortunate enough to end up in places where there are some other women either who came after me or who were already there. But I've been fortunate enough to end up in places where there are some other women, either who came after me or who were already there. But I've heard stories about women who are, you know, the first one ever to be on field in their organization or the first one ever to be in player development and traveling to affiliates. And they have no one at their own club to ask questions like, what do I wear? What time do I show up? Is this outfit appropriate? Can I post this on my Instagram?

What do I wear? What time do I show up? Is this outfit appropriate? Can I post this on my Instagram? And so having those people to talk to that have gone through it before, even if it's not at your specific club, is so invaluable. And that's kind of one of the goals. But then the other goal is to create a voice for us and to try to bring to light certain issues that are unique to women in the game. I was struck by in that piece by James, the way that the conversation around diversity and inclusion seems to be evolving. And I think evolving in a positive way. You noted that your background, absent your gender, would have made you fit in very well in the applicant pool for most baseball front offices. And I think that we've started to see the conversation shift from being just, we need to get more women in the door to acknowledging that not only do we need to get more women in the door, but we need to be inclusive of

folks who are not ascribing to a particular gender identity, acknowledging that when it comes to the representation among women, that they are still largely white women and that we need to be more inclusive of women of color. So I'm curious, you know, and you don't have to betray any confidences, obviously, but how the thinking on the team side is starting to evolve to take an appropriately expansive understanding of diversity, because we don't want, we want to keep the door open behind us, but we want to make sure that the folks that we're bringing in really are representative of all the different kinds of people who play and enjoy baseball. So I'm curious how

your thinking on that has started to evolve and how folks on the team side are starting to think about that when it comes to hiring and mentoring to make sure that it's a truly diverse and representative workforce? Yeah, I think one of the ways that I've really started to look at it is actually not looking at diversity as much and looking at the inclusion aspect. And I think you can be unintentionally diverse just based on the applicant pools you've had and who you've hired and where your team is located if your city happens to be more diverse. But it's very hard to be unintentionally inclusive. I think you really need to work hard to be inclusive for anybody, whether it's women or people of color or

different gender identities. And so I think that's where we need to start focusing on. I think you can have inclusion without having as much diversity and I've been in situations where it's been more diverse but less inclusive and I've been in situations that have been less diverse but more inclusive and and to me personally I mean you obviously want both but I think the inclusion part is the harder part to achieve and so I think that's when when I am in a space that is more inclusive, like that's where I want to be because you can then add diversity onto that. But I think honestly, a lot of what has happened in this country this year has kind of opened our

eyes to the importance of more diversity and just being aware of what other people's experiences are and acknowledging that it's not the same as yours. And I know that I was on the front office side for a long time. That experience is different than being on the field. I know women who are strength coaches or athletic trainers that are in the dugout, that's different than what I've gone through. So just acknowledging how it's different and learning about that so that you can try to make those situations more inclusive. One thing that was brought up in the article, but it also just seems to ring true for a lot of people is like access to facilities, right? So some teams may have a women's locker room, but a lot don't. And so, especially if you're in some sort of on-field role, having a place to

go and change and take a shower. And if you know, if you want to work out before or after work, that makes you feel like you're part of the team. And getting clothes that fit and not just be, you know, having to wear the same stuff that everyone else is, you know, just men's clothes that are boxy or too big or whatever it may be. And things that I've been in situations where there was, you know, literally one stall for women to use, like one bathroom. Yeah. And men had like the entire world. And this was not at like a minor league facility in the middle of nowhere. This was at a major league spring training facility. And it's not necessarily equal facilities, but it's equitable facilities.

And I think that's something that when you talk about inclusion, that's like the low hanging fruit for inclusion is just having your own space and feeling comfortable in what you're wearing. kept it just as high as ever in others. One of the ways, I guess, in which it has lowered it is that we do see women getting hired as coaches. These are positions that historically have been almost exclusively occupied by men just because they almost always went to former major or minor league players who were all men. And so that's how you got those jobs.

And that's changing a little bit. And now I think teams are maybe more interested in what you can do and how you got those jobs. And that's changing a little bit. And now I think teams are maybe more interested in what you can do and how you can teach than where you played and how high you played. And so we have seen a lot of women start to get those jobs, or at least a few, Alyssa Nacken and Rachel Balkovitz and Rachel Folden. Do you get the sense that the pushback there or the challenges there are very different, or are they sort of the same as the challenges that women would encounter in other aspects of baseball operations just because it's so new, really, that women would be welcomed into those roles, unfortunately? unfortunately yeah I think it it's different when you're in a clubhouse every day and and most of my roles I've been around clubhouses and kind of in and out of clubhouses but not in a clubhouse for an entire season but I look to other sports like especially basketball where

they have done an amazing job with women in coaching roles you're seeing it more in football too and it really just shows you that it can work I work. I think a lot of the pushback is fear of the unknown, but men have coached women's teams forever. So there's no reason that women can't coach men's teams too. And I know you can argue, oh, well, they played softball and softball is different than baseball. And yeah, there are some differences, but Ben, it's exactly what you just said. Like it's more about what you can do now, which I think really helps, but that's when you have to kind of, you need to have the right allies in those situations and the right people that are going to support you, bring you along and not just support you, but fight for you and fight for the things that you need.

That's really important, especially once you're getting into clubhouse situations. And if you don't have those backers, people are going to see through it, players are going to see through it, other coaches are going to see through it. And so you need to, you know, really make sure that you're giving the women you're putting in those roles, the support and the power that they need to be successful, you need to really set them up for success. Yeah, I think that identifying this gap in the league's efforts, and I don't say that to be overly critical of what they have done, but I think that you're right that there's just this bridge missing between the initial hiring, which, you know, when I get asked for recommendations for folks who might be interested in front office roles, my experience of it is consistent with yours, which is that teams do seem keen to diversify their hiring, but then there seems to be a lot of attrition in folks in sort of the middle who might then be natural candidates to advance to AGM or GM roles. So I'm curious kind of what advice

you would offer to folks who are just starting out and want to work in baseball operations about how they can identify mentors and sort of find their network so that they are in a position where they're connected to folks at other teams and to each other and have that support network so that they can be in a position to be a natural candidate for advancement, right? Yeah. I feel like this is kind of the go-to, the cliche when you're talking about getting into sports, but networking is hugely important. But try to find people that are similar to you.

Maybe you went to the same school. Maybe if there are any women that are getting into the game that wanna talk about it, I'm here, I'm around. I love helping people kind of get into the industry and I know others feel the same. But I know once you're kind of in the door, sometimes there's this fear of like, well, I don't want to either seem like I'm tampering or seem like I'm sharing secrets or things like that. And I think there's definitely a balance, but there are ways to network without giving up any trade secrets or things like that.

And so don't be afraid to do that. Meg, you mentioned that you have your kind of support group of women as well. And I'm sure you guys work for competing publications and things like that, right? Like on the one hand, you kind of are competitors, but there is this common ground. Yeah. Yeah. So just don't be afraid. If you're a woman on the analytics side or you're interested in getting into the analytics side, look for the other women that are there, even if they're working in a different organization than you. And, you know, don't approach it as kind of, you know, I'm looking for my next job or whatever, but approach it like, you know, I'm looking for solidarity and want to bounce some ideas off of you. And I think most people are pretty, pretty open to things like that. We, like I said earlier, we want other women to be in this game and to feel comfortable. And I, and I hope that,

you know, I don't know for sure, but I hope that there's kind of similar networks among other, you know, gender identities and people of color and whatnot too, because I think everyone's experience is unique and it sometimes it's hard to put yourself in the shoes of what somebody else is going through. But just finding somebody that will listen and understand is really important. Yeah. And the text chain that you started with, what, 10 people and is now up to 49, or was when James wrote his article. Maybe the article has attracted more. But that was specifically for baseball operations employees, right? And that's sort of your experience. Did you want to restrict it to that as opposed to people on the business side? Because it would be more helpful for there to be sort of specified tips or advice or questions, and maybe it would get a bit unwieldy if there were hundreds of people all over baseball in different positions or are there already support systems or networks that exist for that side of things? Yeah. So my thought behind it

was kind of what you said. I wanted to keep it more focused. And I think what women who interact with players and who are more on the field, what they experience is different than maybe somebody in the accounting department or the marketing side. Not to say that the support isn't needed there as well. It definitely is. But I've also just thought that a lot of teams and just organizations, companies in general, have different, whether you call it resource groups or whatnot, but different groups within the organization to kind of support each other. So they may have a women's group or LGBTQ or veterans or working moms or whatever it may be. And I thought that when it comes to stuff that is specific to working with athletes on the field, that's mostly limited to baseball ops and

maybe like PR, player relations, something like that. But I think within teams, it's also important to have that. So like lately I teams, it's also important to have that. So like lately I've been connecting with a lot of the other women at Cleveland who work in ticketing or events or different things like that, that I hadn't really, that I didn't know. And part of that's because I live in Phoenix and they're all in Cleveland, but I think there's kind of two different levels to this. I think what you experience at your club is different club to club. But then I think the experience on field is a little more similar from club to club. And so I think like, it's nice to have, you know, my women at the Cleveland Indians that I can talk to and about stuff that affects us specifically at Cleveland, but also have other women in player

development that I can talk to as needed. So that was kind of the thought process behind it. And in the article, James brought up the Brandon Taupman incident and how you didn't necessarily discuss it specifically in the text group, just in case people weren't comfortable with that or had had interactions with him and might not want to talk about it or could even be co-workers. But did that bring up other issues? Was that viewed as emblematic of other incidents? Or was that seen as a particularly virulent outlier? I think people identified with some of the stuff that happened and just that idea of feeling singled out or feeling picked on or feeling uncomfortable in a situation.

And so that was kind of what we focused on and more about kind of what it meant to the industry, how it was thematic of other things that have happened in the industry instead of the specific event itself. And this is obviously a tough time for a lot of people working in baseball and both on the business sides and the baseball operations side, but there have been a lot of layoffs, a lot of furloughs. Do you think that people who come from groups that haven't traditionally been as well represented in baseball are more vulnerable to that, less vulnerable to that? Often when you get some kind of employment crisis, the junior employees are maybe more susceptible to losing their jobs, you know, if there's some sort of

last in first out policy. But has there been a sense that I guess the people on the text group are particularly at risk? Or is there just sort of a generalized anxiety that probably everyone in baseball is feeling these days? I think a little bit of both. I think as we've seen just in general, women and people of color have been disproportionately affected by everything that has gone on this year. I haven't seen any numbers and don't even think I would. I think anything I would end up hearing would be anecdotal, but it is something that has crossed my mind and it is something that I've thought about a lot lately. And I've thought about kind of how we can be more intentional with making those decisions. And I understand, you know, they're very hard decisions to make,

but kind of just when people are, have to make those decisions to downsize or to furlough staff, take a step back and think about why you're furloughing somebody or why you're letting somebody go and, and why this person over that person. And I just hope that the teams just take an extra second to breathe and think about that before they make final decisions. Because I haven't, like I said, I haven't seen any data on it, but it is something that I'm very worried about that will be disproportionately affected by it. When you look at sort of team initiatives or league-wide initiatives to try to make front offices more

representative, what is the balance that you've found in terms of what is falling to the team's discretion versus what is sort of being directed by the league office? And what do you think the balance there ought to be? So what I was going to say, it's kind of what I already talked about. I think from the league's end, they have a diversity pipeline and they have a fellowship program. And I think they do a great job of getting people in the door. And I think, you know, once you get to the executive level, it's the same, that's kind of where it's been. And I think on both sides, it can be improved and expanded. Yeah. I hate to put something as important as diversifying front offices or people's careers in the bucket of market inefficiency, but are there teams that are sort of looking at the labor landscape and realizing, hey, we have an opportunity here to hire some really smart people who have previously been under-recruited into baseball but are clearly out there and interested in the game. Yeah, I think the kind of more progressive and forward-thinking teams will hopefully start to think that way. And I think these conversations are what bring those things to light, fortunately. And in James's article, he said a woman has yet to break through as an MLB player, manager, or general manager. And I think everyone is well aware of that.

Do you look at those sort of milestone potential hirings as, I guess, a big deal for the broader effort? I mean, obviously, they would be very significant, but do you think those walls have to be broken down in order for there to really be a big change to the pipeline or to the broader hiring trends? Or can inroads continue to be made without those positions being filled by a woman? I think both can be true. I think having Alyssa Naken, you know, coach first base during a spring training game is huge. I think that shows women, but more importantly, young girls that they can do this. So I think, you know, does it have to be the one person to break that glass ceiling? You know, I think that helps.

And I think representation is important. And I think, you know, I never I've never seen a woman doing that, but that never kept me from thinking that I couldn't do those things. But not everyone thinks like that. And for a lot of people, you need to see it first. But I think as we see more people like Alyssa and the Rachels and, you know, as we see women kind of work their way up into that, more and more women and girls growing up can see that, you know, there's also work that groups like

Baseball for All and Justine Siegel are doing to get more girls on the field. I think that helps a lot too. And if you grow up playing baseball, then you can grow up learning that, you know, this is a career that exists. But I think just making general awareness for those of us, you know, that we are in the game, we might not be at the top yet, but we're there. I think that's really important too. So I think both can kind of happen at the same time. All right. Well, you can find Jen on Twitter at JLW072. As she said, she's open to questions. And thanks very much for taking the time to talk to us. Yeah. Thank you both. Enjoy the rest of your week.

Just wanted to mention a couple other resources that people might want to be aware of. Jen MacRamos and Maggie O'Hara started the Non-Cis Men in Baseball Analytics Facebook group. It's a private group, but I will link to where you can join if you're interested. And Jen and Stephanie Springer have also been administering a Slack called the Anti-Old Boys Network for anyone who wants to be in baseball ops who's not a cis white man, which includes women and non-cis folks. That Slack is accessible if you message Jen or Stephanie for an invite. That will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. 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. John Ayers, Gene Bernardo, James O'Brien, Colby Bogey, and Ryan Dorsett. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. 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 podcast.fangraphs.com or via

the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance. And we'll be back with one more episode before the end of this week. Hang in there, and we will talk to you soon. So many have died, but not one will know Wait for it Wait for it Wait for it Wait for it

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