Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1864: One Giant Leap

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a broadcaster relatably mixing up Taylor Ward and Tyler Wade, the Dodgers “fixing” former Rockies pitcher Yency Almonte, a deep, perplexing rabbit hole (7:46) of baseball-themed CarShield commercials, the bat spike as the new bat flip, an umpire’s close call with a broken-bat shard, and the building backlash […]

Things are gonna get better, gonna get better Times fly, so don't you upset her, don't you upset her And I know how I feel, and it's time for a change. And how things are gonna get better, gonna get better. Hello and welcome to episode 1864 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? I'm feeling better about myself because on a recent episode,

I screwed up Taylor Ward and Tyler Wade for the umpteenth time, literally every time that I have mentioned either of them on the podcast. I have to think, wait, is this Ward? Is this Wade? Is this Taylor? Is this Tyler? Sometimes I stumble in the middle of saying one or the other. Well, it's not just me. And in fact, the best baseball broadcasters there are also fall prey to the Taylor-Ward-Tyler-Wade mix-up issue. Who's a better baseball broadcaster than Joe Davis? Almost no one, right? Very short list, if anyone.

If you need someone to replace Vin Scully in the booth, you call Joe Davis. If you need someone to replace Joe Buck, you call Joe Davis. He's one of the best in the biz. And so allow me to play a brief clip from Joe Davis calling a Dodgers-Angels game the other day. Andrew Watts against Gavin Lux, who lifts the first pitch of the inning to right for Tyler Wade or for Taylor Ward. And the first out of the inning. So there you go. Even Joe Davis, one of the best in the biz, he can make the Taylor Ward, Tyler Wade mix up too. It's the Taylor apocalypse.

It's coming for all of us. No one is safe. Not even the most accomplished, polished broadcaster. No, and it's the sort of thing where it's like, you're like, okay, I'm going to look it up. I'm going to have the clear page open in front of me. And I, even that, not enough. It's insufficient because you're like,

what if, what if Fangraphs got it wrong? I've had that thought. You know, the thing about it is we don't really do that very often. Like occasionally we will have to like, you know, we'll have to, like, rerun stats because we get a file and it has a goof in it. But, like, that doesn't, we don't, no, don't care. I'm like, this is going to be the one time. So I feel some sympathy for every broadcaster who actually has to call those games and cannot just edit themselves if they screw it up,

which inevitably we will anyway. It's tough, but we're all in the same boat when it comes to the Wades and the Wards and the Tylers and the Taylors. So we have a guest. It is a familiar guest to some of our listeners. Fernando Perez will be rejoining us on this episode. He has joined us a couple times in the past,

quite memorably, I would say, both times. But one of my favorite Effectively Wild episodes ever during the Jeff Sullivan era was episode 1093, when Jeff and Fernando and I did a live episode in Brooklyn, and that was a ton of fun. And Fernando, he is a former Tampa Bay Ray at the major league level, and he has been a bit of everything. He's been a poet. He's been a writer. He has been a baseball talking head. He is just a really interesting guy. And these days, he works for the San Francisco Giants. He is back in baseball, and he works as the director of video coaching. And he has a lot of thoughts about coaching and player development

and the evolution of those things and how the Giants have managed to outplay the projections, most notably last year, but even this year, to a lesser degree, how they have managed to make some players better seemingly or help them be their best selves and how some teams still don't seem to have the ability to do that on a consistent basis. Like I was just learning this week about Yancey Almonte, who is a pitcher for the Dodgers recently of the Rockies. Yeah. And I guess there are certain teams. Right. It's like when someone goes from the Pirates to someone else or the Rockies to someone else, it's like, oh, look out. Right. Like the analyticallyically oriented progressive player development organization. They're going to get something out of this guy.

And Almonte seems to be another example of this. Mike Petriell just pointed out on Twitter, he tweeted, So Yancey Almonte arrives in LA. Suddenly he's throwing a lot harder, up two and a half miles per hour from his last year with the Rockies. He's got a sweeper with two times as much break as his old slider. And he is unhittable, basically. And Nick Groke, the Rockies writer, wrote about basically what did the Rockies miss with this guy and how the Dodgers have, I guess, had him shelve his four-seamer, which didn't have a great spin rate. He's throwing the sinker a bunch more, I think, right?

Right. or a bunch more, I think, right? Right. And evidently it was part of the recruiting pitch that Dodgers pitcher Jake McGee recommended the Dodgers to Almonte and told him they know their stuff. They're going to teach you a lot of new things that you probably didn't get in Colorado.

So sucks to hear for Rockies fans, though I guess they're used to that by now. But the point is there still is that gap between organizations somehow, even though I think everyone is aware of just how much difference this new technology and information and coaching styles and communication methods can make. So even within that one division, right, there is a giant disparity. And maybe the Rockies are just the obvious punching bag when it comes to this. So I think there's less of a differential than with most organizations,

but still there is still a disparity. And the Giants very quickly seemingly joined the ranks of like, oh, this team is good at this, right? It's like, you know, you have your Dodgers and you have your Astros and you have your Rays and you have your Yankees and you have your Giants, it certainly seems like. So they are in playoff position as we speak. They have possession of a wildcard spot. They're in a tough division, and things aren't going as right for them as they went off last year. But we will talk to Fernando about how they have managed to do a lot of that

and to take on the unwritten rules and just change their attitude toward the game. So I think it's an interesting conversation. He's a very interesting guy. Yeah. Well, and I think that it can, you know, I think you're right that the sort of the average is significantly higher than it used to be in terms of the general acumen of an organization. But I think that the, you know, a situation like Amante sort of speaks to what the gap can still be, that even in the face of an organization like LA, which it's not like they haven't had their share of pitching injuries,

but this is a really good club. This is a contending team. They have a loaded roster. And even in the face of that where you might say, I don't know how likely I am to really get a big league opportunity in an organization like this, that the sort of possibility of them helping you to optimize your game is enticing enough to say, yeah, this is where I should go. So. Right. Yeah. And you would think like once this was out there, once books have been written about it, et cetera, that teams would say,

we've got to catch up if we are not among the leaders here. We'll just hire people or we'll buy these tools or whatever. But easier said than done. And Fernando talks a little bit about that, that you can't necessarily just snap your fingers and go from bottom of the barrel to top. I mean, it takes a lot of work and effort and putting the right people in place and all of that. So we will get to that soon.

But we do have to follow up on just a very pressing matter because we uncovered a mystery. Oh, my goodness. A phenomena. You know, one could call it a conspiracy. That feels strong, but not so far off the mark. Who knew? I talked last time. Yeah, I mentioned last time that often we will post an episode and then immediately be humbled by someone pointing out something that we were not aware of.

And I like to learn, so that's great. But after we talked last time in some depth and detail about the Pete Alonzo Car Shield ad or multiple versions of the Pete Alonzo Car Shield ad, we learned that this goes way beyond Pete Alonzo Car Shield ad or multiple versions of the Pete Alonzo Car Shield ad, we learned that this goes way beyond Pete Alonzo. Pete Alonzo is the tip of the Car Shield baseball player endorsement iceberg here. And so I stayed in Wonderland and found out how deep this rabbit hole goes. We both did over the past couple of days. We watched a lot of CarShield ads. We sure did.

And we're here to report back. Someone should do probably like an exhaustive complete ranking of the CarShield ads. Conveniently, there is a playlist on the CarShield YouTube channel. I'm sorry. Can we take a moment to reflect on the fact that like that exists i mean it certainly made our it enabled our obsession but it is a deeply strange thing that there is an entire playlist of commercials also you have to watch a commercial before you can play them which is you know i don't think that's carshield's fault but i'm just gonna point it out as a

a small annoyance of modern life that i will probably think about once a week for the rest of my life. Yeah, I guess it depends on what your ad blocker situation is, although I would hate for someone to block ads and miss out on the CarShield ads. To be clear here, this is not a CarShield ad. We are not sponsored by CarShield. I don't even have a car. And if I did, I don't know that I would be a CarShield ad. We are not sponsored by CarShield. I don't even have a car. And if I did, I don't know that I would be a CarShield customer. I'm not really an extended warranty guy when it comes to other things in my life. But the thing is, there are 21 MLB-themed CarShield ads.

21, you guys. 21. And Pete Alonzo, I guess it makes sense that he was the one who first came to our attention because he's probably the most famous one of the endorsers here. I guess Walker Bueller would be. I was going to say. Yeah, the other contender. So beyond that, though, you would never really guess. And so what seems to be happening here is that they are embracing baseball's regional fan base, right? So we were talking last time about like, well, why is he not doing an ad with some bigger, more famous company? And, well, maybe it's because baseball players are not the best known.

They don't have the highest Q rating often, unfortunately, these days. And people follow their local team and they're very fervent about their local team, but maybe not national figures in the way that other celebrities or even athletes are. So maybe that is why CarShield has leaned into that and basically produced local versions of the ad for many different localities featuring players who are better known in those markets. Although not even in those markets in some case, essentially. I mean, maybe we can just do a little roll call here. So Kyle Tucker of the Astros has sponsored CarShield. The Royals, Chris Bubich. The Phillies, Matt Veerling. We'll come back to that because that is the most like, who, why, what? Jay Bruce, retired now, Jay Bruce has one. Ian Happ and friend of the show, John Boogshambi, they've done a local Chicago version.

Ryan Mountcastle of the Orioles has two. Also, I should mention, they cornered the market with the Happ and Shambi ad, but they also have Patrick Wisdom. He's doing one too. In that one, as in most of them, Wisdom says, you can't afford to get caught looking. And then the announcer voice says, don't swing and miss. Not sure I would pair Patrick Wisdom with Copy About Not Striking Out. He of the 39% career strikeout rate, but okay.

Atlanta's Austin Riley. The Pirates' David Bednar. Sure. Austin Riley has two, actually, I should say, like Pete Alonso and like Ryan Mountcastle. The Tigers version is with Akil Badu and Riley Green. Then you have Brett Phillips. He has two as well. Bueller, I mentioned.

The Cardinals broadcaster, Dan McLaughlin, he has a couple, as does Cardinal Dylan Carlson. He has two. So there are three Cardinals-centric versions, which is maybe because Carshield is a Missouri-based company. So they're playing to the base there, the hometown fans. I think they're based in St. Peter's, Missouri. St. Peter's, Missouri. So there are all kinds of variants, but there's sort of a template, wouldn't you say? I mean, there's sort of, I guess, lorem ipsum, there's like a stock text that is used in these with slight variations, depending on the player and the delivery, but like weird variations. Yes, strange, wild, bizarre. What is the meaning that happens that it results in these? Because, look, my you having like a a greater degree of specificity than that now i think that my theory was wrong clearly based on the fact that there are so many of these and that they are tailored to local markets as you suggested so that makes the presence of the of the differences between the copy for these commercials to be just like truly baffling because if you are carshield and you just want your viewer to be like hey a baseball player who plays in major league baseball you

don't care if the copy is the same or different like you just need a guy who is plausibly a baseball player up there saying plausible baseball words but they have specified in some commercials in a way that suggests that like they are either aware of the particulars of that player's repertoire or profile or that the player in question was like, I don't throw that, right? Like if you watch the Walker Bueller one, like the Walker Bueller one makes sense. It talks about his four seamer. He's talking about- He throws a cutter to get grounders true fact check true true fact check true checked it out fact check true you know and so like that one you're like okay they either knew enough about walker buehler to hand to him a script that was

in line with his actual repertoire or they were like like, hey, Walker, what do you throw? And when do you throw it? And what are you trying to do when you do? And then Walker was like, well, this is what I do. And they were like, cool, we're going to write that into the commercial. So there are instances where they seem invested in the particulars. And then there are times when it's like, no are we are we are disinterested in that because you know they have guys who are not famously home run hitters or at least not famously home run hitters relative to

pete alonzo who is so famous a home run hitter that they feel the need to tell you about it several times in the course of his commercial right ben what is this meeting and is it like one meeting where they're like trying to decide who's gonna say what or is this being piecemeal together and then they're like well we already had pete alonso talk about defense so i guess our only other option is to like make i don't know ryan mountcastle talk about hitting home runs because we can't have him talk about his defense? Like, what are we? That's the thing. Yeah. The listener who initially brought the Alonzo ad to our attention had two quibbles. One was that Alonzo says like he sees two seamers and he sees breaking balls and even a change up. And he said, well, change ups aren't that rare,

really. Well, there are many versions of this ad where the hitter says something like that. Alonzo is the only one who says even a change up. Like some of them will just. Is that an ad lib on Pete Alonzo's part? Did he decide to do that? Because some of them will just say like, or a change up, or they will just list the pitch types or Mountcastle has my favorite delivery of that, where it doesn't sound like he's ending the sentence. It's like it sounds like he's going to keep listing pitch types and then just doesn't. And then they just cut. When I step in the box, I have to be ready for anything.

A two seamer, a breaking ball, a change up. I'm Ryan Mountcastle and out here you can't afford to be caught looking. But yeah, did he just personalize that? And if so, why? And then also, yes, the thing where Alonso says he knows a thing or two about good defense. Now, as we noted, he's not a bad defender and you can know a thing or two about good defense without being a superlative defender yourself. But why have Ryan Mountcastle then say that he knows a thing or two about hitting home runs? Like you have Pete Alonso. He knows as much as anyone about hitting home runs. Why not have him say that he knows a thing or two, all championships. I think Buehler says something like that too. So if you won a World Series, then they will have you say that.

If you're Pete Alonso, like the first thing you think of with Pete Alonso probably is home run hitting. Yes. So why not have him say that instead of Ryan Mountcastle? I don't get it. And we had wondered before whether the fact that Alonso was in a car accident this spring had had anything to do with this and seemingly not, right?

Because it's not Alonzo, it's everyone. And I'm given to understand that CarShield doesn't even provide protection for accidents. It's more about like mechanical issues and that kind of repairs. Other maintenance. Yeah. So it's just whoever they could get basically is how they do it. And there are these slight but confusing variations in some of them. And I think my favorite thing of all, because like these are fairly low budget, low production value ads. I mean, it's just guys standing there talking into a camera, very obviously reading a cue card and then like interspersed with some images of him swinging or something.

And then like interspersed with some images of him swinging or something. The best thing is that the Kyle Tucker ad has a major continuity issue, which is that Kyle Tucker left-handed hitter. And they do show him like standing at the plate in a lefty stance and maybe taking some swings. Then they cut to Pete Alonzo swinging. There's like one shot of Pete Alonso swinging in the Kyle Tucker ads, which just slipped past the Car Shield editors, I guess. So that's just in there. I think that's my favorite thing in all of them. Yeah. And it's like, look, I have made the comparison before that Kyle Tucker, he kind of reminds me of Ichabod Crane from the animated Legends of Sleepy Hollow and Pete Alonso does not remind me of that. Famously called the Polar

Bear. Very different guys and so how did that happen Ben? And the fact that they're obviously reading from cue cards makes me think that Pete Alonso didn't add Lib Align because as we saw in his second commercial where he is very clearly reading off the cards in the course of the commercial. I don't think

he's sitting up there going like this is the line that the commercial. I don't think he's sitting up there going, this is the line that feels right. I just got to add an even in here. Look, they are very low budget, as you know, but the budget can't be that low because there are a lot of them and some of the guys who they are looping into this, you imagine you got to make it worth Walker Buehler's time. I think you got to make it worth walker buehler's time i think you got to make it worth pete alonso's time like you know maybe not like bednar like that

might not be you know there are a couple guys in here where they're probably like i got to be in a commercial right so good for them but it's a very it's a confounding thing. The whole thing is just, and they have so many guys that at no point were they like, we should just ask if we can get like the league license so that we can put all these dudes in uniform. No. Yeah. I mean, it's like you could almost field an entire team out of Car Shield sponsors. You could almost do that.

I was watching this. out of CarShield sponsors. You could almost do that. I was watching this. I was thinking like on Wednesday, Austin Riley and Ryan Mountcastle both had multi-homer games. What do they have in common? Well, they're both CarShield endorsers.

So I don't know. It's weird. I guess the most random one would be Veerling with the Phillies, Matt Veerling. So there is actually an article about this in the Philadelphia Inquirer like that's basically like, why is Matt Verling a pitchman for Car Shield? And he sounds as confused as anyone. So he says, I'm quoting here, Verling isn't offended whenever someone comes across his 60 second commercial on television or YouTube and wonders if it's some sort of joke. My friends see it and they're like, what the heck's going on? Veerling said with a laugh this week after getting recalled from AAA Tuesday.

I think Bryce Harper saw it and was like, what? You're on TV? I'm like, yeah, I guess. It's pretty funny. And then it says the story of how a 25-year-old outfielder with three career home runs winds up in a commercial for an auto insurance company begins with a phone call looking to build an advertising campaign around major league players. Carshield enlisted New York Mets star first baseman Pete Alonzo and Los Angeles Dodgers ace Walker Bueller. The Braves' Austin Riley, the Cubs' Patrick Wisdom, and the Baltimore Orioles' Ryan

Mountcastle also shot mostly regional spots. All are more recognizable, at least in their team's markets, than Vierling. But Vierling's agent is friendly with an executive at Carshield, which is based in St. Louis, Vierling's hometown. That was the initial connection. It was a good opportunity for him to get his face out there, his agent says, and I have to tell you, for his first time doing it, he was really darn impressive. In late March, on a day off in spring training, Veerling made the 45-mile drive from the Phillies Complex in Clearwater to State College of Florida's

campus in Bradenton for the shoot. It lasted a little more than an hour. He thinks he did about 20 takes, taking swings both with his bat and as a thespian by reeling off lines packed with baseball jargon. So he says, I'm not an actor. We filmed it. And yeah, now it's on TV. It's pretty funny. The interesting thing is that Veerling said, I know a thing or two about game winning hits, which like at that point in his career, I don't think he had one. He has since had one. He had a big one off of Josh Hader. So maybe he did know a thing or two. But why? Why have him say that?

Why not him know something about good defense? I don't know. It's just all of it is kind of confusing. And apparently if you're like from St. Louis and you can call a Car Shield executive, you too can have a Car Shield ad. Wow. And like they had to have done two shoots, right? Because they have teams. Like a Florida and an Arizona shoot.

Yeah, because the Dodgers don't train in Florida anymore as we've learned. Yeah. And this is not the end of their sponsorships and even their baseball sponsorships. So they must be just blowing their marketing budget on baseball. There is actually a collegiate league that is sponsored by CarShield, the CarShield Collegiate League. It's based at CarShield Park in O'Fallon, Missouri. It was formed in 2020. So yeah, there is a whole league called the CarShield Collegiate League. They play at CarShield Field. And it's not that they only have baseball pitch people. They also have an other strange assortment of celebrities. Like if you go to their website, they say, we are becoming, Larry M.C. Reynolds, Ernie Hudson,

Ric Flair, Vivica A. Fox, et cetera, et cetera. There's like some NHL versions of this. One of the guys from Shark Tank is on here who's supposedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So I don't know why he needs the car shield money. Because he's not actually worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Perhaps. Perhaps that is why.

But it is just I don't know like what the criteria are for like are you a CarShield person? Are you CarShield material? It's basically like are you from St. Louis? Like do you know a CarShield executive? Are you a baseball player of some sort? Then good news. You can have a 30 or 60 second spot with us and i really i do need to know if these are the people who call me all the time about about

extending my warranty because you don't drive but i do and i'm yeah i'm fine you guys if this finds its way back to you i would like to be off of your list, please. Yeah. You could do a complete ranking of these, and I encourage someone to steal that idea if they need to produce content somewhere. But I will say, like, the deliveries of the baseball players are almost universally terrible to the point where I'm not sure whether they were instructed to, like, hey.

They're supposed to be bad on purpose. Yeah, like, don't learn your lines. Don't rehearse. I mean, I guess players are just driving over during an off day during spring training. They didn't put a ton of prep into this, but they look, it's almost charming in a way, just like how unpracticed they are and how clearly they are reading. And it almost enhances the comedic effect when they are going for a comedic effect, which is another weird thing. Like sometimes the ads are supposed to be funny and sometimes they are not at all,

although they may be intentionally funny anyway. Like there's a Dylan Carlson version that is kind of funny where they're like playing up the fact that they are just layering in all of these baseball puns and references and everything and kind of playing around with that. Car Shield is magic. I think they're wizards or something.

Can't say that, it's anti-wizard. Car Shield, the only local that won't ask you where you went to high school. Cut. Take 24. Car Shield, like a heroic outfielder that saves the day again and again. Car Shield is like making a diving catch to end the inning. Just feels good. Car Shield is like getting a pitcher's best stuff and still winning the battle. Car Shield protects your car better than I play outfield. Wait, what? Don't strike

out against expensive car repairs so it's odd and you watch that one and like in order for the humor to work they have to like sync it to to dylan carlson specifically so again they have the capacity to know if the commercial makes sense and are we supposed to think that they are just exercising it sporadically? Ben. Yeah, some of them follow a game show format. Guess that coverage where it's like they ask them questions and the answer is always like, Carfield is awesome. I think the best delivery award goes to Akil Badu. I think he was the most natural on camera. Make of it what you will. Most of these players are white. It seems like they have chosen mostly white players for this campaign, whatever that means. The best, Brett Phillips, perhaps unsurprisingly. He at least brings some energy and some enthusiasm, as you would expect from Brett Phillips.

But it's not great. The on-air talent here, not particularly polished deliveries. But I guess that's part of the fun. Yeah, I think that those two players probably do the best. I would maybe add the Hap-Boog combo plays pretty well like they have they have nice chemistry they both appear to also be off book in a genuine way which is rare in this particular instance so it is funny though because in the um the hap boog commercial it's sort of like the second pete alonzo commercial where like the guy gets in his car and he's like do you have this

here and then like boog like pops out of the back seat and is like i am also here and it's like wouldn't you have noticed two people in your car yeah listener dylan wrote in to say uh boog is like a mob enforcer hiding in the back seat yeah it's like he just pops up all of a sudden like hello yeah i did think in all of that genre where someone is just like waiting in the car, the other guy, the guy whose car it is, who just sits down, is always named Nathan, even though it's a different person. It's a different guy. So they brought in different Nathans for each version of these things. It is just, it's wild. I never suspected that there was such a network of CarShield ads featuring baseball players. And I guess they got what they wanted, which is publicity on the baseball podcast. I

don't know if that's what they were going for, but that is what they are getting here. It is just one of the strangest campaigns in the silliest that I have seen. Do you think that they made it? Look, I don't want to think we're important because we have our little baseball podcast and I know that it brings joy to some, but I don't want to overstate anything. Do you think they knew

that we would be suckers for this and talk about it incessantly and give them free advertising? Targeted marketing for Effectively Wild. Bednar and Bubic say they know a thing or two about incessantly and give them free advertising. Targeted marketing for Effectively Wild. Yeah. Yeah. Bednar and Bubic say they know a thing or two about good defense. Like they're pitchers. I mean, I guess defense is important to them.

Sure. They would know a thing or two about good defense, but why not say like they know a thing or two about something explicitly pitching related? I don't know. Like the pitching version of this with some of them is like instead of the hitter version where it's like, oh, I get this pitch type and that pitch type and that pitch type. The pitchers will say, I throw this pitch type or that type. You know, they didn't mess with the script and the format too much. They changed it the bare minimum, basically. So you have Bednar and Bubic saying that they know a thing or two about good defense. I don't want to denigrate their defense, but it's also not what I would think of first. No, I mean, look, sometimes if you're a pitcher, it is to your benefit to engage in bad defense because then they charge you with an error

and you can momentarily keep a no-hitter intact. Right. Just to reference recent baseball history, that was about Tyler Anderson. Yes. So I guess we will link to the playlist if anyone else wants to explore this for themselves. I think my favorite moment is in the Jay Bruce ad where they cut mid-smile. He's like just starting to smile and then they cut before he could finish the smile. It's very strange. It just speaks to the production values here. Anyway, I have messaged Boog about this because in the Boog version, it identifies him as real Carshield customer, Boog Shambi. Some of these ads, it will say real Carshield customer or like in the game show version, the disembodied

voice will say like, how do you know so much about Carshield? And the player will be like, well, I'm a Carshield customer. And so I've asked boog like was he really was he a carshield customer was he one before this ad did they give him uh carshield privileges that they make him a a carshield customer client so that they could claim that he was a real carshield customer i've not heard back yet but i will update anyone if i do if he divulges anything about the behind the scenes car shield process can boog get me off the call list if indeed those are the people calling me i never stay on the line long enough to hear what company it is because they're like do you want to extend your warranty and i'm like oh i still i still don't want to do that. I still would. I'm fine. I'm still okay. Thank you. Well, thank you to the

many, many people who yelled and tweeted and commented and messaged and sent smoke signals, did a Paul Revere ride, whatever it was, to alert us to the existence of their local CarShield ad. Although most of the ones who contacted us, even they didn't suspect just how deep this went. They're like, hey, there's a Patrick Wisdom version of this, or there's a Walker Bueller version of this. Let me tell you, there are so many versions and so many players. It's a whole Carshield fraternity. So it's really something. I now have a Carrie Matheson wall of guys with string. I have to identify the Carshield fallow period. It's going to be in yellow.

Don't know. Anyway. They all came out at the same time, I think. Late April, they just saturated the market. It's just blanket coverage, no matter what fan of a team. I guess there are still some teams that are lacking Car Shield representation. So sorry to all of those. Anyway, we want to get to Fernando.

I will just mention I noted Vierling's big game-winning hit. There was also a big game-winning walk-off hit by a Philly who has been a guest on this podcast, Garrett Stubbs. And he debuted, I don't know if it's a new move. I'm sure this has been done before. But instead of the bat flip, he did a dramatic bat spike. And so I'm wondering if this is going to catch on if it hasn't already, like if this is a tired wired situation with like tired bat flip, wired bat spike. He just like he slams it down into the ground very demonstratively. And I'm kind of over bat flips. Not that I think bat flips should go away

or anything. It's just that they're very common. And so I'm less excited about bat flips than I was before. Not that they were like my favorite thing ever. I wasn't like leading the bat flip charge. But fine with bat flips. Bat flips can enhance my enjoyment and ramp up the excitement sometimes. But they're so common now that when people make a big deal out of the bat flip, I think this is something we see every day. The bat spike is an interesting variation. So I'm sure he didn't debut this. I'm sure he didn't introduce it, but maybe this big highlight will help popularize it. And I'd like to see it because just as we talk about having biodiversity in baseball players and styles of play, I think we should have biodiversity in bat-based celebrations. Yes, I support that. I do worry about the ricochet potential of the bat

spike, but I think that that might just introduce a level of skill to the bat spike genre that I look forward to seeing people explore. I mostly, you know, I operate under the assumption that if I were a baseball player, like whatever the maximally klutzy way of engaging in a particular activity would be, that would be how I would do it. Not that I am especially klutzy in my day-to-day life, but I just assume that like that's what the baseball gods would do to me. That's the hand I would be dealt. But I imagine that that is a less singular concern for people whose job is, in some capacity, to be well-coordinated. Right, yeah.

And I guess the term bat spike, now that makes me think of umpire Nate Tomlinson getting hit in the face by a bat shard the other day. I don't know whether you saw that. Is he okay? He is okay. Oh, that's good. There was a Mike Trout broken bat, and somehow this bat shard flipped in such a way that it got in between the bars of Tomlinson's face mask behind home plate.

And there's a still image, which is maybe a little misleading. I don't know. But it was captured at the very instant where this bat was just like protruding through his mask. And it looks like his face was impaled by a bat. I mean, that is basically what happened. And he left the game and he was bleeding. Fortunately, he's OK. You know, relatively minor injuries like he could have lost an eye or something like it's not hard to imagine. So it's one of those things that I don't know that I've ever seen that happen before. And it has to be like the perfect trajectory and angle and everything for that to happen. But boy, that was sort of scary.

If you see that photo, like be careful. Content warning on that picture. Yeah, it is. It will make you go. Yeah, definitely. So glad he is OK seemingly. on that picture. Yeah, it is. It will make you go, ugh. Yeah, definitely. So glad he is okay seemingly. And it does seem, since we talked about it last time or two times ago perhaps,

that there is a backlash building, I think, to the position player pitcher just in the last couple days. Now, there was a Bob Nightingale tweet, and the tweet said, Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch had a team meeting after the game, calling it embarrassing that they used three position player pitchers to pitch in a game for the first time in their rich history. The last team to suffer the embarrassment was the Chicago Cubs in April 2021.

Now, everyone in the world, quote, tweeted that with the I think you should leave meme for, you know, we're all looking for the guy who did this, right? Because A.J. Hinch obviously is the one who put those position players into pitch. Yeah, I don't, you know, this is a Nightingale tweet and I don't know exactly like what Hinch said. And I'm sure that Hinch is aware that he is in fact the person who put those people in. And he was probably saying that it was such a blowout and that was what was embarrassing. Yeah, the Tigers have been bad. And so the fact that they were in a position to use that many position player pitchers reflects poorly on the team, I guess.

But if you're sick of position player pitching, I think that's the latest flashpoint. And Brandon McCarthy, former guest and former pitcher, he tweeted, position player pitching is nonsense and needs to be outlawed. Blasters are already exploding with pitchers. Use them. So that started some discourse and I'm kind of on board with it to an extent. I'm in favor of stricter legislation, I think, to cut down on the position player pitching epidemic. I wouldn't call it a scourge and sometimes it's fun. And as I talked about, the opportunity cost is low if you're just going to have a reliever pitching in an uninteresting

blowout anyway. But it does seem like just the escalation in position player pitchers and the situations in which they're being used these days, coupled with the fact that there are just so many real pitchers in theory could pitch instead, I think that is leading to some growing frustration. So who knows? Maybe we will see those rules tightened to prevent certain position player pitching appearances that we have seen. Maybe. Maybe. All right. So let us take a quick break and we will be back with Fernando to talk about player development and coaching and the Giants. And just a warning for those of you who have some sensitivity to language.

Fernando does work blue a bit in this segment. We won't be bleeping it because how often do you hear a baseball person curse up a storm in a public interview at least? Maybe it speaks to Fernando being an unconventional guy and the Giants being an unconventional team. Also, I just enjoy his swearing. So cover the kids' ears and we'll be right back. Fernando says it's understood. No offense, you're credited good. Your white folks had it.

It's all gone now. You never had no rhythm anyhow. Fernando says take a clue. Fernando says you're overdue. Fernando says take in mind. Well, we are rejoined now by our friend and former guest, one of our favorite former guests, Fernando Perez, who has gotten a job in baseball since the last time we talked to him. So he will probably be boring now. He works for a baseball team. He has to watch his words. He has to be careful that he does not give out any proprietary info. And if he does, then maybe he'll ask us to edit it out even. But

hopefully he'll be entertaining anyway. I think that he will. Fernando, welcome back. That's what an intro, huh? All right. All right, off guard. Here we go. All right. Yeah, I'm not suggesting that you will be boring or that you should be boring. It's just that, you know, people who work for baseball teams, they're always cautious, careful.

What can I say? What can't I say? It happens. Once the khakis hit your skin. We really like to butter up our guests on this show if you haven't gotten that. That was more like, I can't believe it's not butter, but I got it. Yeah, it's still Fernando. He sounds like a shadow of his former self. No, but no.

He is the director of video coaching for the San Francisco Giants. So you've gotten not only a job in baseball, but a great gig in baseball. And you've had a front row seat to one of the most exciting, successful seasons in recent memory or not even recent memory. But tell us how you got this gig. You started with the Giants last year as a video coach, and now you're director of video coaching. It's funny, as you say it, I'm like, I'm just so lucky. I just keep having these really neat experiences in baseball. Yeah. Right. I was like a rookie and got to go to the World Series for no reason, basically. And then this was you know pandemic was tough man I like missed baseball in a you know in a way and I started talking I don't mean like in a way I mean in a way like I just really was like almost

in my feelings missing baseball and in some ways I think it just kind of you know for many people especially the New Yorkers pandemic felt kind of like end timesy and like I think people were like let me let me fucking pick off some of these items on the bucket list or something and I just kind of like started talking to different people in the game obviously know a lot of people working in the game and not all those conversations were super fun some of them were great I talked to Charlie a lot just like one of my favorite people in baseball forever forever and ever but not all of them were kind of fun I mean if I would say that there's like this there's a bit of know, like teams kind of often put this front, like they just like have stuff figured out. Like, what could you possibly do for me?

It's like a little bit arrogant. But when I was talking to Cap and the Giant, it was like it didn't feel like a baseball thing, which was really, really cool. really cool and honestly I was very much prepared to like do something very very regular you know just like be like maybe more of a traditional coach and kind of you know I'd probably not start like directly in the big leagues after being so far away from baseball for for so many years which is part of the reason of wanting to get back in. I mean, I was like realizing even I hadn't done even baseball TV in quite some time, but I was realizing I'm like, oh, I'm like making shit up on air. I have no idea what I'm talking about. So I'm like, no, now, you know, apparently I'm not the only one, though, because I watch TV. So yeah, so I was talking to them and I had this idea of video

coaching kind of like kicking around. It was like one of those things that it's like I would think about it for a while and then I was just like, no, that's like too ambitious or too weird or something like that. And really I had like, I did not intend on bringing it out, maybe for like another year, I was going to kind of pitch teams. But you know, then it was like, and again, also, when I was talking to teams, like I wasn't even sure that I would work that year. Like I was kind of thinking, you know, start to sort of talk to some teams and maybe get in the year after. But yeah, I mean, you know, talking to Cap is like just a lot different than talking to other baseball folks. So it was kind of like, hey, I have this experimental idea

like on my shelf. You want to look at it? He's like, fuck yeah, I want to look at that. So we kind of like it sort of went from there. But then also it was like once I was talking to them, it was like I want to go to Far also it was like, once I was talking to them, it was like, I want to go to Farhan university over like the other universities. So, um, it was like, it was like, okay, so now that this conversation is, is going kind of well with them, it was like, you know, Hey, I have this, this thing that you might like. And then, yeah, here we are. this thing that you might like. And then yeah, here we are. So what did you plan to pitch teams on in terms of the role? And then how would you describe your role now to those who might otherwise make up things on TV?

Already regretting that. So it's just like kind of the idea that it's 2022. People are the average person, the average young person is just less inclined to have in-person conversations. They're glued to their phones. It's been years now of us, of many people just being a lot more inclined to digest something in like video content format than they are verbally. And especially like in the moment, you know, if I've got to talk to you about something, like let's say that we have a meeting, like, you know, I call a meeting and we talk about this thing, like maybe you have to take a shit. Maybe you are in like many, many other places. Maybe the meeting itself is like itself a nerve wracking thing. Like I'm, I for sure blacked out during every single meeting that I ever had, important

meeting that I ever had in baseball. Like every time I got cut by Joe Madden and Andrew Friedman, I was like, I had no idea what was going on. I was just sweating and looking at people's faces, moving. But did Madden have a mohawk at the time? Do you remember that? Did he have a mohawk?

I don't think he ever fired me with a mohawk on. He did have one, though, in 2008, right? There was a mohawk period. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I followed him right off that ledge. We were talking about that the other day because, you know, he was just fired by the Angels and it was reported that he had gotten a Mohawk just before he was fired in an attempt to

motivate the players. And he never actually got to show off the Mohawk because he was fired before he could. And we were wondering, like, well, if he had not been fired, would everyone on that team have had a Mohawk? Like, would Shohei Otani have had a Mohawk? And we were wondering about the psychology of that as a player on that team. Like, when that kind of thing happens, are you like, oh, no, I guess I've got to go along with this or I'll be, like, the not team player?

Or do you really get in the spirit of it and you're like, hell yeah, I want a Mohawk? In 2022, it's different i mean in 2008 for me it was like this is pretty easy for me it's like last week i was uh eating at denny's this week i'm i'm in the big leagues and my manager just got a mohawk like i should probably get one it's like the math is not very difficult there yeah right okay but you know 2022 and it's you know i don't know we've had many cycles of mohawk so maybe there'd be some you know some resistance to it there but um yeah yeah that's a sad that's a sad no it's okay uh interrupt your video coaching explanation that's a sad That's a sad. That's a sad. That's a sad. That's like kind of a sad story. But yeah, you know, he'll be back very soon. So wait, what was I talking about? Being a video coach.

Video coaching. Being a video coach. And how video coaching can like reach people in weird places or help to potentially alleviate anxiety about meetings and stuff. Yeah. Or help to potentially alleviate anxiety about meetings and stuff. Yeah. So in general, it was an idea that I hadn't even really thought about sports yet.

I spent a year covering soccer. I covered the Champions League for about a year or so. And soccer has just been on my mind. I love basketball. There's not a day that goes by that I'm, you know, like in the thick of like enduring baseball culture where I'm just like, oh, God, I wish I played basketball. Like I love basketball. I love I love all these other sports. I was just thinking about how it would possibly work to essentially support your coaches and reach your players in this medium. And then obviously the closer I got to thinking about baseball, it was like, okay, how would this work in baseball?

So it would be different for every sport. And then within every sport, it would be different for every team. There would be some teams that have different needs. The way that it works for this team is kind of specific. And I'd like rather not get into the specifics of how it works for them, because it's kind of their, in a sense, it's like their proprietary thing. But you know, the broad strokes I've kind of laid out there. And I think that at this point, we're running, you know, like last year was sort of like a very light version of what I thought that it

could be. And this year it's definitely more involved. I've, you know, some more, some more support and resources and stuff like that, but still there's, there's like, you know, plenty more there. Yeah. So I'll just stop there. So are you in uniform? Are you around before, So are you in uniform? Are you around before, during, after games? What is your schedule roughly or how do you work with the front office or the players to the extent that you can say? I got khakis. I got a uniform. I got shorts. So you go both ways. 100%. Yeah, I mean, last year, there was not really any time to do any on field stuff like at all. In a lot of ways, you know, in some ways, I'm kind of like, like a diplomat, I'm kind of like, sort of, you know, there's a lot of coaching and a lot of things that already exist. And I'm just kind of like making sure that a lot of that stuff doesn't get lost. Right. And just like either go over people's heads or just like be forgotten or any of those things. So, yeah, I guess that's the best the best way to explain it. Yeah. I was going to ask about the blurry lines between the front office and the

field staff these days. And maybe when you came up with the Rays and Madden, they were kind of early exemplars of those two groups really working together in a collaborative way, perhaps. But definitely over the almost 15 years since that time, it seems like, you know, even with the Giants, right, you have someone like Brian Bannister, another friend of ours who is a pitching coach, but he's a director of pitching. It's kind of a coach, but also a front office role, sort of. So do you consider yourself one or the other? Is there a distinction or is it just that the communication is kind of so hand in glove that it's the same entity, at least ideally. Well, when, you know, there have been many teams that have, essentially every team at this point has attempted to have this sort of swingman role between the front office and, you know, like the players or the coaches, let's say. Right, yeah. I've called it a conduit in the past. I think Benny's used that term too, yeah.

A conduit, right. If you do some digging, there have been some spectacular failures. I'm not at liberty to disclose those, but there have been some spectacular failures. Now, why, especially in the past, right? When analytics was kind of like Facebook in 2002, like, will it beat MySpace? I don't know about this analytics, like that kind of thing. But now, well, I should still say that even at this point, there are, you know, teams that are still kind of like, I don't know. So, you know, if, and again, it's not that it's only this, but this is like, I would say 80% of the issue, right? To analytics or to not analytics. 80% of the issue that is addressed

by having this conduit role, swingman role is this. And there are still some teams and of course players that are just like, nah, nah, nah, I'm not really into that. Now, fortunately in this organization, I think all of our coaches will tell you that the job is made really, really easy when you have especially intelligent players that are just in or at least in to listen. That makes everything so much easier.

I mean, there are probably teams right now. I mean, for sure, a couple of years back. But right now where there are team there are like players that are leading like micro revolutions, like against, you know, you, the use of this kind of information. So it's kind of, it can be kind of hostile. So here there isn't really a blurry line. And I think it's in part because the coaches speak the language. And so it's not really, there isn't like a distinct line, I would say. So I don't know what I would consider myself just somewhere in between. I mean, in a lot of ways, I'm just reporting, you know, in a lot of ways, you know, there's there are so many, you know, you've talked to Banny.

There are so many amazing content providers here, right? Banny, between Banny and people like Kai, Dustin Lind. And then, you know, obviously, you know, front office people, Scott and, you know, Zach and, you know obviously you know front office people Scott and you know Zach and you know people like that there's so there's there's just so there's just constantly and then there's a hundred coaches so that there's just fascinating conversations like always always always going on and then just in and around baseball you know maybe in talking to you guys there will be something that makes its way in front of someone somewhere, whether it's a minor league or somewhere or somebody on our major league staff.

I wanted to ask you about those 100 coaches. It's not quite 100, but I think that when folks were casting about for explanations for the spectacular season that the Giants had last year, one of the things they hit upon was the size of the coaching staff and the seeming advantage that brought. And I'm curious sort of how you see the advantages and disadvantages of a staff that size, because I think that for a lot of fans, they think of coaches as sort of a unified front and then players as a unified front. But obviously, there are going to be different approaches and philosophies and perspectives in both camps. So what are the advantages and disadvantages of a staff that size? You know, as you ask that very, very good question, I sort of regret saying a hundred there because I'm sort of playing into this. There is, you know, this narrative that we just have like

all these coaches. It's a robust staff though. It is robust. 16-ish. I mean, again coaches it's a staff though it is it is robust 16 ish i mean it's again it's hard to define i guess but yeah it isn't it isn't too many more than what's around the league also people are like hiding coaches under different roles and things like that because they don't want to like seem like they're having too big of a stab because they'd be like weird or whatever. So advantages, several of us could drop dead and we're good. There's a lot of, there's a lot of changeover,

you know, as I'm noticing, there's so much changeover in baseball. And I don't know, it's, I don't know if it's so related to that. Maybe it's I don't know if it's so related to that maybe it's just I just feel like making the point of that the changeover year to year is just you know has just left such a deep

impression on me and as to you know the challenges of having you know continuity and keeping proprietary information and things like that but yeah yeah, I mean, there's obviously the cartoon moments of, you know, you've got like four fungo hitters, each with their own flipper, and there's stuff like that. But you know, it really the stock PR answer is, you know, diversity of thought. It's also just true, for sure. We do have a lot of interesting people here who think fairly differently. It is a weird Brady Bunch, for sure. It's pretty great, though. I don't think that we annoy the players. One of my favorite things about it is that, you know, there's a, I was sitting in on a meeting that I remember is actually an amazing meeting that we were having with Anthony Descalfani when he first got here.

And Bailey was basically saying to him, you know, one of the reasons we have three coaches is if you find one of us annoying, you can just talk to the other ones. And he said it obviously like, you know, a little bit differently, but it's really, really true. And so the culture is that the culture here is really, you know, coaches are consultants. So like, you know, why not have one in, you know, different colors or different shapes and sizes, like just in case one doesn't, you know, quite rock with you. So I think that there's only advantages. I don't, you know, the disadvantages, I don't really see. I think if you look around your office, like you could maybe say like, oh, I wish we had somebody that did this. And it's like, voila, there they are. So I don't

see any disadvantages, but I'm open to entertain some of them if you want to propose some. Yeah, I guess I wouldn't see a disadvantage necessarily, but maybe just a logistical challenge. that everyone's sort of on the same page and that everyone knows what conversations are going on, I guess, so that you don't have, you know, pitching coach A saying one thing and then pitching coach B says something else without knowing what pitching coach A said. So I guess there's a lot of coordination that has to happen, right? Yeah. But, you know, I think that that's a perfect example. Like, doesn't that just strike you as like smart and something that like every company should do yeah i mean obviously you know we we've been a part of this culture for a long time and a lot of times like somebody is doing something that's like very like 2007 in silicon valley and people are like this is fucking crazy and and that to me sounds exactly like one of them. It just is smart because, and it can happen in generally, like I'm a generalist. So I spend time, I'm particularly embedded with the hitting core, but, you know, there are different projects that are serving pitchers as well, you know, especially through the, you know, minor league system and stuff like that so in general I just like try not to say much or I preface basically everything with like you know uh you don't have to listen to this but this is

what I was thinking you know and and I think that's just like generally how how it should be obviously the the the opposite of that is something that is super prevalent throughout baseball to this day at every level where it's like, I'm a coach, I have an ego and I'm going to put hands on you and try to get you to do a thing that I could then claim credit for. And that is like, it's, it's like the coach disease and, and it's everywhere and it's the worst. And so, um, I just think that that's like a, you know, like a risk management system sort of built in, which is great.

with it. That was kind of a conversation that we had all year long about that team. I mean, I'm guessing you didn't assume that you were joining a 107 win team when you took that job. And I know no one else assumed that. And of course, the Giants famously beat all of the preseason statistical projections by the widest margin of any team on record. And so the whole season for us was just like, oh, oh the giants are off to a hot start look at that well they can't keep this up they're not going to sustain that and then bit by bit by bit it was like wait are the giants actually good are the giants actually really good are all these players who are seemingly performing over their heads just better than we thought they were and if so did the giants make them better? So take us through. Are the Giants the best?

What? Exactly. Are they the best? Like, are they the best? That was kind of the conversation. Were there any think pieces just about, like, the arrogance of the industry and, like, the faith in the projection systems? Yes, there were a few, perhaps. Oh, there were a few.

Oh, good. I can send you some links. But yeah, I mean, how much did they surpass your own expectations? And then just, I mean, how much did you buy in or how quickly did you buy in and believe that, no, this was actually a really great team? I have these streaks of like boring earnestness. And I actually truly, very early believed, but that's just because like, I believed the players and the players set like very, very clear goals. Now, as I was taking note of these goals, like other players, I had this hilarious conversation with Yaz where we

were talking about that very thing. It's kind of like a now infamous meeting very, very early in the season where some lofty goals and expectations about the way that we would go about these goals would be, you know, how we'd go about this. And many of the more senior players spoke and said, you know, things that would certainly ring throughout the season. A lot of that because, you know, and a lot of that was just like kind of like my job. And in many, many ways, my job is to kind of just like preserve and regurgitate their own culture back to them. Like somebody should have time to do that, right? Imagine if you have a team meeting at the beginning of the year and you say

all of these things, like think about how many times maybe you've like been out with like a bunch of friends and you're all drunk and you're saying all this stuff. Like, I love you, man. Like we should really do like more of this and more of that. Like, imagine if you just, you just like had an assistant that just like held you to those things like all the time. And so, you know, there was quite a bit of that. There's quite a bit of that in what I do. But so yeah, I definitely believed very, very early. Obviously, 107 is a lot of games. You know, 100 is a lot. Does either team win that many games without the other team is the pace car? I'm not sure. There's also a chance that we both entirely without the other team as the pace car i'm not sure there's also a chance that we both entirely ignored the other team because that is also very very very giant and it's also

very very baseball you know like in baseball the media and other people they're just like you know what about those dodgers and and the guys are just like, what? Like, we're playing the Pirates today. The Pirates keep fucking whooping our ass. Like, that's who we're worried about, actually, right now.. I don't know. I think that the the projection thing of we're just pretty deep into the whole like, let me rather than sort of talk about the yins and yangs of of like, you know, if X, Y, Z happens, the Giants could be at this range like there's a there's kind of less of that of that and it's just kind of like let me fucking hit a bullseye right like on national television and so if that's if that's what's going on you know people will often be very very wrong and it was the season that they were you know very very wrong so i don't know we didn't see donald trump either but you know you could have if you asked any of your black friends how racist people actually are you know but the giants are much more pleasant surprise yeah far far more pleasant far more pleasant surprise and then also let's be honest like

who was watching our games like really who was watching our games like you know if we're being honest most people are watching the Mets the Yankees the Dodgers and Otani starts you know and and lots of those people I would imagine were the people like weighing in like how are they doing this like maybe watch the game we have really good players like really good players and then you know know, the, the, the fine wine aging, I don't know, ask them, you know, it's, you never get honest answers. And then the honest truth is it's like the people that are right in the thick of it have no idea. They could make some shit up on a podcast. They have no, we have no idea how all of that happened. So I definitely, I definitely feel that the players got overlooked. It was like everybody, it was, it was like, everybody was like, how are they so good? And

like, people just like looking past the players, like perhaps it's because the players are really good. And so they, it felt like they didn't really get their due. It's very, very clear that Farhan and Scott are very good at fantasy baseball, right? They're very good at it. Most people fucking, they go to Ross or TJ Maxx or Marshalls. You come out with jeans that don't really fit. These fucking guys come out with Lamont Wade and Luis Gonzalez. Like it's, it's impressive. That definitely helps. You know, I don't know. There's I just want to highlight that, you know, in the center of it, people are still sort of unsure. It's a mystical kind of thing. But it did kind of bother me that there weren't enough people that were just kind of talking about how good the players were and performed. And there's definitely some, there were some good bounces for sure. Yeah. You brought up the Dodgers and the sort of daily awareness of them. We did want to ask you sort of what is the, either the motivational value or perhaps the frustration of operating in a division where you have one and, you know, you were meant to have two before the Padres fade in the second half. Competitors where, youitors where if you had been in the central,

you could have won a lot fewer games and sort of waltzed in, but you had the misfortune of being in the NL West. How much does that operate either in the forefront or the background as you're navigating the season? It seems like a good time to deploy one of those quotes about like you want to be the best you play the best like something something like that you know waltzing in is cool too uh that's that's a nice time you know the season's so crazy that you know the end of it it really does truly matter like what's going on the last week of the

season yeah losing Brandon Belt for me we lose the World Series right there losing Brandon Belt the World Series yes the playoffs is a crapshoot but you know we were we were like maybe the best team in baseball and we lost our Barry Bonds like Belt was just out of his mind last year. And that was also my favorite part of the, of the whole thing. Like this is like America, very dropped to the ball. Like Brandon Belt basically turned into a pro wrestler and a comedian at the same time. I'm not sure I've seen better TV. And we were, you know, like talking about whatever, like boring Tim Tebow,

payola, you know, narratives, rather than that, like he was, he was going, he was doing press conferences, like talking about being like the greatest in the world. It's just, it was like, he went full Muhammad Ali, and nobody found that interesting at all. But he was, yeah, I mean, that I thought that was a huge, you know, huge, huge, huge blow, even though we had been doing it all year because we were very injured all year long. So that's why, you know, having a really, really strong culture, not just, you know, we talk about culture usually about as this sort of like, you know, happy thing or not a happy thing, just like a like a social thing. I don't mean socially. I mean, you know, like a like a culture that actually seeps into the way the game is played and the way the game is viewed and the way that players like newcomer players sort of take their cues to step in. There are bad cultures and they don't really help people at all, but, you know, people just kept stepping in. But that was, you know, a major, major blow to have

at the end of the season. So anyway, ranting a bit, but, you know, the last week of the season really means a lot. So if you're not playing meaningful games for three weeks, like maybe that's a disadvantage. Like maybe you just need to kind of like the best case scenario is that you're kind of like, you know, maybe the, that nationals team, like, you know, you're bad. And then like, you just climb out of that. And then like, just, it's just full steam ahead. And then, you know, a couple trades were even better what like that's maybe that's that's like the uh the formula nobody really knows so i don't know i i don't for me personally i love baseball it means i get to watch really good players when we play the we play the dodgers and the padres

you know it's like there's a pitch a great pitch. It's like off the end of the bat, serve to right field, like hit exactly to where the guy's positioned. Same thing happens on the inner half of the play. Just like that over and over. Amazing pitches. Like, it's just good to watch. It's great. Obviously, it's not great for business. Like, I'd much prefer that we won 140 games and kept, you know, going obviously

to the playoffs. So I don't know, maybe that's a shit answer, but it's really entertaining. There are some really, really good players. It's like a great time for baseball. I don't know if that's like a cop-out answer. Well, you talked about the fact that the players were good and that maybe that was underappreciated. And I think that's true because the thing about the Giants season was that it was surprising that they were performing so much better than everyone had anticipated. But the underlying numbers, the metrics of the team, like the building blocks added up to that record.

It wasn't like the Mariners season last year, right, where everyone was incredibly clutch and it was fun, but it felt kind of fluky maybe like the Giants had the run differential and everything that would go along with a team that was winning so much. So I think what took people by surprise was that the players who were so good, some of them had been good before. Others had never been that good before. Others hadn't been that good in years and were at an age where you wouldn't expect them to get better suddenly so that's the thing it's like not to say that these weren't good players but it seemed like almost the entire team at once just like played better than those players individually had before

or had in some time so i was going to ask just if you had a best story or favorite story of a player who has come to the Giants and has had some higher gear unlocked, some latent talent that they were not fully leveraging, or maybe just the Giants have managed to deploy them in some way that maximized their skills, or maybe they just decided to take advantage of some of the resources that are out there and they made themselves better. They just decided to take advantage of some of the resources that are out there and they made themselves better. Like, is there a good example in your mind of someone who has sort of exemplified the possibilities of player development now and coaching that the Giants have embraced to get to a higher level of performance? For sure. Two of them. I mean, the first I already explained, Belt. I could just be kind of shorter about that just because he'll tell you, you should,

you know, talk to him sometime. I don't know if you've ever had him on, on the podcast, but talk about somebody who's like far more fascinating than you think. Like, you know, I had never, I don't think that I had seen real, like a Brandon belt interview or anything like that, but you know, it's a baseball interview. Like we're just doing the bull Durham thing. So you. But you know, it's a baseball interview, like, we're just doing the Bull Durham thing. So you wouldn't really know. But like, this is like, one extremely fascinating person, and like, also like a bit of a genius. And for me, just for you know, per our conversations, like, I think a great deal of his late bloom is just like a confidence thing and so you know we were taught and so we're a close in age and so even though we were totally

totally different players a lot of the same script was like taught to all of us it's like hitting the ball in the air is bad you know focus on these like line drives, line drives, line drives, hit the ball the other way, you know, all of this stuff. You know, I think that part of his, I think, huge flowering to me was this, this like all of a sudden, just not being afraid to be great. Now, it's a really, it's a, it's like a thing that I struggle to deploy. It's like using impossible as a, as an adjective, which is like something that like I cringe at like in, in creative writing, but it's like, it's something the first time that I had ever heard it was from Lou Montanez. I was just like put on waivers or DFA or whatever by the Cubs. And I had this conversation with Lou before he's going out and Lou is like

hitting like three 90 and triple a. So he's like, great. A little bit late and he says it and it just kind of like hit me like a ton of bricks. So there are all sorts of things often keeping players from just going and getting it. And a lot, and a lot of times it's just like things within them that are just like holding them back for whatever reason. Like they're just not prepared to be like the very, very best or they're not prepared. Like, I don't know what to do with all of that success.

It may seem kind of abstract, but it's like actually really the simplest thing. And I know that a lot of athletes I, would know what I'm talking about. It's like emotionally or socially, there's just something that just makes you like a little bit shy about having like massive success. And so perhaps it is subconsciously, physically, actually holding you back from getting it. He is just like free and clear. And, you know, some of it was just like some of the things that he was taught. But also it is players, if they're able to, if they're able to be good enough to stay in the league, most of them will get better, obviously, until like their physical abilities like decline. So right, you know, there's a there's a sweet spot. It's

just that we just don't see that many players get into it, right? With a player who's hurt quite a bit, you might see flashes of it and then never see it. And then if you're looking at that small sample, you're just like, oh, well, that guy just sucks. You're not realizing like, actually, he's amazing, but then he's hurt and then he's hurt and then he's hurt, but then he's amazing. You know, so that's how I would explain that. The other one is obvious, you know, Brandon Crawford. And if you talk to him, he would, he would tell you, you know, he would credit his coaches. You know, there's a lot of things that he did. He was extremely open. And there was a lot of things that he did to sort of, you know, bring out some

things that were already there. I mean, you're talking about, you know, one of the better athletes, you know, of our generation, like silently, quietly, for sure, one of the better athletes of our generation. So and we're talking, obviously, performing in a way that he had never, ever really performed, like he had always been good and dangerous, but not like, like, not like MVP, like last year. So yeah. And that's, you know, he is pretty, you know, not really shy about saying, you know, I got quite a bit of, you know, direction and, um, and help from, you know, from our coaches. So it's, you know, players are, you know, unlocking what what they have is like, what a process that can be depending

on your player, understanding them is very, very important. And then, you know, again, like having the, like, do you do you even know, there are some there are some players that are you know i think i would say like easier let's say to fix than others for sure but i i know for sure that there are some there are some teams that are not quite sure exactly like really like what to do the simplest way that i could that i could put it and make it clear is like there's like kind of like a cookie cutter approach in general that is and this applies to pitching as well it's like we have cut this cookie and it's a fantastic cookie and this is the way this is like this is how cookies are made so we're with every player we're going to attempt to make the same exact cookie right and um if if

you're gonna do that you're gonna hit on like 10% of those. What's very difficult is meeting the player where they are and figuring out how to make them into the best cookie possible to weirdly continue. Well, what is the biggest difference then between, say, when you were coming up as a player, even reaching the major league level? Like, is it just that there is less bad advice, counterproductive advice of the kind you were talking about, not to hit fly balls or whatever it is? Is it that you have certain tech and just information that wasn't available there through StatCast and motion tracking and Rapsodo and all of these things that I'm sure the Giants make great use of. Is it just the resources, like having more coaches the way that the Giants do? What is the biggest difference? Are there certain things that you look back and

think, man, if I had known this, if I had been told that, who knows how my career could have been different? I think that every single person feels that. Every single coach. It's, you know, I think about it quite a bit. I'm like, oh, if only somebody told me this or that. So very simply, there's just so much more information out there. Half of the players that we're getting have their own ideas coming in. That was true before, but not like half of the players that we're getting like have their own ideas coming in yeah that was true before but not like half of them you know you had before when i was playing you had you know i don't

know one in ten players were like very coached and had their own you know ideas and their own hitting coaches sort of mark and then you had a bunch of guys that were just kind of showing up for whatever we had at the buffet. There's so much information that if you are the type of player that likes to think for yourself and read and research, oh, it's incredible. There's just so much. there's so much information. It's just, you know, you could, you could read a little bit of this, a little bit of that and be like, I like the way he explains it. I don't really agree with this. This kind of works for

my body. I mean, there's so many different things and we're still, you know, getting, getting closer. You know, years ago, I was always saying that I found it insane that nobody could just tell you what bat you should use. And then like, that's a thing now, apparently. So yeah, we're just, we're just getting closer and closer to like solving almost everything, or at least like getting closer to trying with things. And so, you know, it's just easy if you think for yourself, there's a lot there. Now, also too, if you've got coaches that do a lot of homework for you, you can just be open and curious and come away with quite a bit. So I don't know. I mean, I think there were a few examples of coaches who were

kind of like, I don't know, I would say there were a few examples of coaches that had like, this is how it's done. And like, just trust me and do it this way. But I think that there was, you know, I found I felt that it was like, kind of like wishy, like a little bit wishy-washy. And now it feels like, it feels like such specific answers to things are given. And there's lots of different, you know, frameworks to sort of like talk about them. Like we can, you know, we can just say kind of totally external, we could, we could be mostly internal there. You've got guys that are just, you know, you, there there are some coaches like all they concern themselves with are just like the mechanics of the swing. And then there are others who are, you know, far more focused on like approach and like the competition and sort of like the game theory of, you know, arsenals and things like that. you know, arsenals and things like that. So I'm curious within sort of the context of all of that information and all of the potential specialization that a coach might have, like, what do you and I

realize that there are probably things that you're not going to be able to talk about in relationship to this question. But what do you view as sort of the next frontiers of player development? Like, where does the sport need to go next to continue to unlock competitive advantage? Okay. So I'm obsessed with this. So individual players are experts in their ways. Some of them, you've met people that are really good at things and just like, don't maybe know how or why and then there are others who are like less good at them less good at things but they know exactly why they were bad or why they were almost good now those people become coaches often sure now i digress a bit talking about great, great players. We don't really do enough to reverse engineer their successes because a lot of times it's like, if they can't just are like cleanly articulately

explain, this is how I hit sliders, then we're just like not really interested. So I just think that we need to do a much better job of reverse engineering that information. And I think that that is like, that's like anthropology field work. I would love to do that. I have no time right now, but that is, you know, part of,

that was actually like part of my initial pitch because I think that that's everything. You know, they're all, they're strange. Like, so if I go into my head, I have all these weird sort of frameworks for how I played the game. Like, for instance, I thought the way that you hit a change up is to wait for the last possible moment. That maybe seems crazy for you, but I have such a specific idea of what that means. So I could go out and say that to a hundred baseball players and it resonates with like 30 of them. That's still a win. It's just, you know, it's just like making sure that those 70 that it doesn't resonate with are just like, yeah, I don't get it.

So I'm just ignoring that. So now that's just like one example picked at random. I think that every player, that's like how they play the game. So we should understand. So why is Evan Longoria like so good at third base? Why is he so good? Why are his hands so good if you watch this guy do drills i mean i saw it up close 15 years ago or whatever and like now i'm seeing it again

where you watch him do drills and he just like looks better than all the other players so what's going through his head so like you know there's a goofy version of this where you just like put one of those like neurosensor nets on his head and like see what's see what's going on but like i just think that there is a there's a there's a way to do it that's just more kind of like a like a series of of interviews and things like that and and i i just think that that's like the next way of of doing things because i think that players like there are many players that they, they may like, you'll talk to them and they will not necessarily seem like geniuses, but they're, some of them are total fucking geniuses. They just maybe are not articulate or they're, they're only like, there are many, not every genius is like well-rounded and like reads poetry like there are many many of them that's like i'm a mechanic like i'm a mechanic i'm like i'm a genius i like just don't care for john steinbeck like i just i'm a mechanic and i'm a genius when it comes to the car well so if you can kind of hang in there and get quality time with geniuses and just kind of keep going for for like ways to sort of reverse engineer their processes and understand like the little frameworks that they have about thinking about the game.

I think that you're in a really, really great place. in a really, really great place. So that was part of like, that two way communication is kind of, it's like, kind of like phase. It's like the next phase of, of this project. Like, I don't know if we'll get there. Like I said, it would be different for every team, you know, it's like, in a way, I'm like, you know, like a contractor, right? If I if I was working for the Brooklyn Nets, what I would do is a is a contractor, right? If I was working for the Brooklyn Nets, what I would do is a very different product than what I would do for the Lakers. And that's incumbent on like their, you know, their staff, their players,

what the particular issues that they have are as a team, like what their, you know, blind spots are. But, you know, I think that that specific piece of the project like would be really fascinating in any sport. Also, maybe it's a dumb idea and I just really want to do it because it'd be fun. But I quite think it's a decent idea. That is interesting because I think there's a temptation not just in sports, but in any field.

You look at the top performers and you think, oh, they're just gifted, right? They're just more gifted or they are just geniuses. It's like something inherent in them. And maybe there's some element of that. But I think often you look and it's, well, they practiced more or they practiced better or they do something that actually could be replicable by someone who maybe is not quite as fast or not quite as strong or at least not initially. Like a lot of what looks like just a gift is something that they kind of gave themselves

by doing something that made them better. So that's smart. But I think one other interesting aspect of this is that a lot of these things, it's just kind of challenging, investigating, sometimes contradicting some of these old maxims, these old beliefs about what you want a swing to look like, what kind of batted ball you want. Can you throw a fastball up in the zone? Do you even want to throw a fastball at all?

You know, the idea of the fastball count, right? And now you can just throw any pitch in any count. And if you have a good secondary quote unquote pitch, then that should be your primary pitch. Like a lot of those ideas have just gotten tossed out. And some of that is driven by the data and technology that shows that certain old ideas were wrong or certain ideas were right and were underapplied. And this is not just necessarily like super high tech secret proprietary stuff. It's like we're going to bunt against the shift. And then maybe those guys won't shift on us so much because they know that we might bunt. Or the play the other day where Jastrzemski tried to do the deke on the game ending Sacrifice Fly, right?

And tried to deke the runner. Yeah. It didn't work, but he tried it, right? But it could have worked. It could have. It didn't work, but he tried it, right? But it could have worked. It could have. It could have worked, right. Or I was going to, like, the kind of giants, you know, declaring open season on the unwritten rules this year

and basically saying, like, we don't recognize the unwritten rules. Like, if you give us this, we're going to take it, regardless of what the situation is. And I know there's just a lot of like tradition-based resistance to that. Like, I don't know how that would have gone down during your playing days, but now it seems like the Giants are kind of leading the way

to toppling, overturning some of that stuff. Yeah, that wouldn't have worked as well back in my day, like that's that long ago. But yeah, it definitely wouldn't have. But why? There's just because there was a higher concentration of like crotchety people who like made rookies feel uncomfortable and probably play worse as a result so yeah it wouldn't have but you know you said about the

advantages thing I think that that is like the thing that the real truth of like what I'm what I've missed after so much time up into like when I was playing obviously like there are advantages and there's like the same old things that like some teams are doing and some teams are not it's like that and it's it kind of feels like when I was playing obviously you know I was a rookie and then got hurt and sort of disappeared so I didn't get to become like a four or five year player who's like comfortable enough and now good enough that I'm just like, you know what, like, I'm gonna like look to, you know, sit on certain pitches or like do the or like, you know, intentionally miss a

pitch early in the game. So I get it a little bit later. These AP batting kinds of things, right? What's so fascinating is that right now, advantages, they're around for a season sometimes and then they're gone. So if you can find one and exploit one while it's exploitable, you must do it. And, you know, you have to have the personnel that can do that. If you have young, kind of like, looser players, like, you know, it's, it's not going to work as well. Like when you have, when you have players who are a little bit more mature and poised, for whom the game is like a little bit slower, you know, those things can work. But those advantages, like they can disappear in a season. Like sometimes the advantages are like as simple as scouting. Like this guy does this all the time.

So until he stops doing that, let's exploit the hell out of this this weakness so they're all out there you know do you have the personnel that can find them if you do you you can absolutely exploit that for advantages until it disappears but they disappear quite you know quite quickly sometimes it's as simple as the pitcher that has this extremely, how would you say, like extremely predictable sequence. Like he's just not in the league anymore because he got hit too hard. You know, sometimes it's as simple as that. But yeah, that is really, really interesting

in the game right now. Because obviously with as intense as scouting gets, that's part of your job is to clean up those weaknesses like on your own team or at least notify people of them so that you know teams can stop exploiting them so so you know a big thing now is like if you just look at all of the tendencies that all of your players have you know you just want to make them less predictable like in general so like if you like only bunt at the 1-0 count somebody should tell you that you only bunt at the 1-0 count like maybe you don't know maybe every time it happens you're just like this would be a great time to bunt

it's like you know someone should tell you so that's you know that's also part of the uh you know part of the challenge of of like quality control, essentially. It's just like making people aware of those things because we're all like we're zombies, just playing game after game after game like Groundhog's Day every day. And you were a position player and you said you're more involved on the offensive side maybe now. And there is just this eternal battle between batters and pitchers, right? And it seems like every time that there is some advance on the technological side, it seems to be harnessed first or best by the defense, by run prevention. And there are a lot of reasons why that is. Hitting is reactive and pitchers can just kind of decide what they want to do before every pitch, etc. But do you see that changing or are there things that are leveling the playing field there? Are there tools that you can take advantage of as a video coach, as someone who's helping hitters more often, I guess, to kind of keep pace with just all the incredible advances that people are making on the pitching side. I have nothing super sexy for you there. It's a beautiful struggle between pitchers and position players. It's everything culturally too. It's like I tell people I'm obviously like, you know, very much engaged in like the tactical warfare of baseball now, but like up until this year, like really didn't care for it.

I was more like, you know, just, you know, interested in stories and people. But however, that is at the center of everything. The like the fundamental differences between pitchers and between hitters. It's like it never gets old, you know, like those, you know, like rom-coms that are specifically about the difference between men and women, like they're very watchable, you know, so it's just, it's always a thing. I don't have much for that because it's, you know, baseball is an ecosystem and, you know, the office of the commissioner, they can tweak that ecosystem when things are, when, you know, the balance is not what they like, right? So, and, you know, the balance is not what they like. Right. So, yeah. And, you know, I would expect them to write like maybe I'm just too like hitter. I think of myself as like a failed, like left handed pitcher, really, who was throwing with the wrong arm. I like pitching.

There's nothing more fun to me than to be a pitcher. Like, I really do love pitchers. But like as a hitter like you must hate them uh you must hate their kind as as a hitter really truly and all of the underhanded things that they do like you you must and so i just think that will they have to move the mound back like is this interesting to watch is it interesting to watch guys like attempt to throw fastballs at the top rail like every pitch? Like, is that interesting? Is it interesting to watch guys like come in like these freak shows come in in the seventh, eighth and ninth? And it's like, you know, they're just like walking. They're like walking guys, striking guys out, pop out pop up is boring like is that do we want to see that like you know i don't know so like you know it we could easily be living in this world where people are just like well like we wouldn't want to change anything so that the record books

were different and we'd just be watching some form of like you know boring annoying thing that we don't want to watch so i don't know it's tough to say. I just think that the ecosystem will be changed and, you know, we'll just like adjust. But, you know, obviously pitchers will always have the upper hand as they like, you know, give the thing life. And we're always as hitters just reacting to the things that they're doing. So we can end with something silly, which is that when the Yaz attempted deke happened, I know you said it got you excited that a lot of outfielders want to do something like that, whether they actually try to or not. Do you have a play that you wish someone would try or that you wished that you would try or maybe that you did try when you were a player? Is there a dream play that you have in mind the chris coglan play i think everybody's dreamed of that i just was so proud of him i thought it was remind everyone the chris coglan play is when he dove he like superman dove over the catcher and scored a run coming at a very high rate of speed

i'm sure the catcher was just scared that he was going to get run over that's a really good one i watched carl crawford tag up from second and score thought i was like didn't know that was allowed i actually did that some years later and was really pleased with myself because it was like the only good thing that i had done really that whole month beyond that i don't know i mean like we haven't seen a hidden ball trick in a long time we're just talking about that yeah i'll tell you what these modern players there are a lot of things but they're kind of spacey so there's uh there is opportunity there it's amazing the game it's like so interesting like nobody's you know like nobody's really fast uh defensive positioning is so good like does it matter like do you need the best defenders not really like it's just it's just it's interesting it felt like before back in my day felt kind of

like every team had like at least one guy who was like a 6'3", 6'0 guy. It felt like it. Like at least like somewhere, you know, in the depth chart. And it's like not really the case anymore. It's cool as hell that you have guys that are playing so many positions. I was so impressed with the Royals catcher outfielder dude that just came to town. So that's really cool but it's just you know things are kind of different but yeah I do I hope that's not like the beginning

of the end for me saying like these you know these young players I don't know if they're paying attention they're fundamentals but uh I yeah I don't know I think it might I think it might be a thing. And there are reasons for it, right? There are definitely reasons for it. Look, I don't know. It just feels maybe I'm being influenced because I know the narrative is out there that like base running is historically bad. Isn't it?

I think people have been saying that. I've seen that take. You know, baseball, the game looks different. I've been closer to where, are you guys in New York? I am. I'm in Arizona. You're in Arizona. Well, I've been closer for the last couple of years.

I've been closer to that life where you're just like in New York, like watching some games. I'm watching some games on TV and now I'm like with a team watching teams come in and like feeling the experience of this team coming in compared to the experience of the next team coming in. So you're seeing the difference of like, what does it feel like to go through their lineup three times? What does it feel like to go through this lineup three times? What does it feel like to get into this bullpen and get into that bullpen? It's you know it's it's quite quite different and um for me i'm seeing some like spacey shit going on so i think that there's um i think that we're good for a hidden ball trick yeah i guess that's my answer yeah all right well the silliest possible last thing then i get the sense that you are probably not wearing a stashing players on the ir isn't cheating t-shirt are you are you ready for

the the slap story the fantasy football dispute to go away i'm not wearing that t-shirt because i'm a lover and um look jock peterson i will tell you he's one of my favorite people that i've met recently there's definitely it's like that with almost everybody you watch people do their boring ass bull dermsy interviews and he's like whatever and then like you meet some of them you're just like oh, oh my God, this person's amazing. Just really, really, really like them. Tommy Pham also gave my favorite interview, perhaps in baseball history, when he explained on Father's Day

that he wanted to thank himself for tossing the ball to himself. Tommy, lastly, from Durango High School in Las Vegas to the Cardinals to a moment like this, who do you want to thank for helping you get here? There's a lot of people I could thank, you know, but I'm proud of myself, to be honest with you. I remember throwing a ball against the wall, playing catch with myself, throwing a ball up, hitting it, throwing batting practice to myself.

You know what I mean? I believed in myself from a young age, you know, it ain't like I had a dad out there to, to, um, play catch with me or throw me batting practice. So, you know, I'm proud of myself. So like, they're just two people that I have a lot of respect for. Like, you know, I'm obviously team jock. I just think the whole thing is you know kind of boring and silly uh but you know hey uh i guess the people like it you know i didn't wear i didn't wear a shirt i won't be wearing a shirt you know i don't play fantasy football either i uh so like i just i just don't care the whole thing's boring but you know i hope they they get together for tea sometime.

Yeah. We've talked before about like whether baseball players are funny or at least publicly funny. Right. Because what passes for public baseball humor, often not great or it's the same sort of jokes and pranks repeated over and over again. And I guess it's sort of the same when it comes to like baseball drama and like getting a window and insight into interplayer relations. So it's rare. If this were some other sport where a lot of that tends to get aired more publicly, maybe on social media, maybe it wouldn't have been as big a deal. But in baseball, to actually get the exhaustive explanation that Jock gave and then the back and forth that has happened since it has kept it in the public eye there's been a new news cycle every day or two seemingly little tidbits come

out yeah it just highlights that it is always a slow news day in baseball which is one of the problems which is one of baseball's problems really that's why we need more hidden ball tricks exactly right yeah and more people and podcast guests like Fernando Perez, who still extremely fun to talk to you. Sorry about my intro. You are immersed in baseball culture again, but it has not robbed you of any of your personality, fortunately. Maybe it's because the Giants are not your typical baseball culture, at least traditionally. So just a joy to have you on again, and hopefully we can do it again, not years later. I hope so, too.

It is always very fun chatting. It's very nice to meet you, Meg. Nice to meet you, too. All right. I forgot to give you today's past blast earlier in the episode. So before I clock out for the week, let me give you that and a few follow-ups. As always, this comes from Richard Hirschberger, saber historian, author, researcher, writer of Strike Four, The Evolution of Baseball, a book that I hope some of you will be picking up. This is episode 1864, so today's past blast, of course, is from 1864, and this is a brief excerpt

from The Brooklyn Eagle on June 16th, 1864. It says, Eureka versus Empire Clubs. Miller was at second and Benson at first. When Jewett hit a high ball, which Burroughs, the Eureka pitcher, could easily have held on the fly. Had he done so, however, only one player would have been put out. Therefore, for strategical reasons, he muffed it. And picking the ball up quickly, threw it to third base, and it being forwarded rapidly to second, both the men that were forced to run to those bases were put out. You've probably picked up on which scenario this is describing.

Richard writes, This is the infield fly play, my name for the play that the modern infield fly rule abolishes. Under the modern rule, the umpire would have called this an infield fly, putting the batter out automatically, and the runners would have remained safely at their bases. This rule was not yet imagined. Burrows, by intentionally muffing the ball, forces the runners off their bases, but with such a late start that he is able to turn a double play. This was not a trick play. Plays such as the hidden ball trick rely on the runner not paying attention. This is not the issue

with the infield fly play. The runners have no way of knowing ahead of time whether the fielder will catch or drop the ball, so they don't know whether to run or to stay at their bases. This was a difficult play for the fielder. It was easy to misplay, resulting in no outs at all. So it was admitted as skillful play when executed successfully. As a final note, he says, everything you think you know about the reasons for the infield fly rule is wrong. This is too big a subject for one minute, but he sends me a link to a deep dive he did for Sabre on the origin of the infs or so, but it's hard to pin down. Richard told me the language if momentarily held is not the most transparent. This is why it is misunderstood today. You wouldn't pick up the intent from reading the rules. I figured it out by doing my research the hard way, sifting through reporting for interesting discussions. It wasn't a whole lot more transparent

at the time. Nick Young, in later years in his capacity as NL secretary and later president, would put out bulletins in the spring with official interpretations of various rules. This one featured pretty frequently. This is a dead giveaway that it wasn't being enforced consistently. The modern language was implemented in, oh, 1895, I think. It also is not a triumph of clarity, but it was good enough that people, especially umpires, figured it out. And going earlier, Nick Young as an umpire called it in 1872. There is a lot of consensus building in how the game is played that does not always show up in the rules right away or even ever. Richard also adds that he believes the infield fly called in the 2012 NLCS was absolutely correct.

Okay, as promised, a few follow-ups. Okay, as promised, a few follow-ups. We talked recently about the play that the Cardinals pulled off where Nolan Gorman just ran right through second with the bases loaded instead of sliding in so that he would not break his momentum there. He would be safe at second, and the runner who was on third could score. And we thought, this is smart. Why doesn't everyone do it? Well, there is one reason, which Connor pointed out to us. The big concern about running through second is if the fielder going to the bag

steps through the bag and there's a huge collision. The Cards did it against the Cubs a couple weeks ago, and the runner very nearly ran over Nick Madrigal. The shortstopper's second baseman continuing through the bag when catching the ball is fairly common, and you're only doing this on a bang-bang play, therefore increasing the likelihood of a collision. All it takes is one big collision before you have an issue. Good point, Connor. Enjoyed that play. Hope to see it more. But also would prefer for runners and infielders not to injure each other.

Now, most of you probably heard that on Wednesday, the Astros pulled off two immaculate innings in the same game against the same three batters. Very fun fact. Luis Garcia had the first immaculate inning. That's three strikeouts on nine pitches. Phil Maton had the second. And better yet, they did it against the same three batters, each of them Nathaniel Lowe, Ezequiel Duran, and Brad Miller.

And as Sarah Langs tweeted, this is the first time on record there have been two immaculate innings on a single calendar date, let alone in the same game or by the same team. So that's pretty amazing. But Patreon supporter Jeffrey asked a different question. He noted, I just watched Luis Garcia pitch an immaculate inning and then strike out the first batter in the next inning on three pitches as well. Unfortunately, he then struck out the following batter on five pitches. What's the record for number of consecutive strikeouts on three pitches recorded by one pitcher? So he had an immaculate inning in a third, essentially. And that actually is the record within one game,

dating back to 1988, which is when pitch-by-pitch data started. Garcia was the seventh to have four consecutive three-pitch strikeouts in a single game, after Andy Ashby in 1991, Jesus Sanchez in 1998, Matt Clement, 2003, Francisco Liriano, 2012, Craig Kimbrell, 2017, and Kenta Maeda, 2018. However, the record holder, if we count multiple outings, appears to be Tony Watson. On April 2nd and 6th of 2014, an all-star season for him, he had five consecutive strikeouts strung across those two games on three pitches each. Thank you to Lucas Apostolaris of Baseball Prospectus for looking that one up. And you can check out a blog from Ben Clemens at Fangraphs

for more on three-pitch strikeouts. That will be linked on the show page. Listener Peter said, Last week I watched the Red Sox at Angels game on June 9th. I thought the bottom of the third was interesting. Nick Pavetta was pitching. He struck out Otani and then struck out Stassi. The third batter was Walsh. He did not strike out but hit a soft grounder toward first.

Pavetta was coming off the mound in that direction and made a one unassisted put out at first. I was excited because I was under the impression that this has all happened in nine pitches, three per batter. So my first thought was that this should qualify as some kind of special version of an immaculate inning. Since the pitcher threw nine pitches and made three outs without any assistance from a fielder, I went back to watch it again. It turned out I had missed a ball, making it a 10 pitch inning. Still, I wonder how you feel about it. Suppose it was a nine pitch inning. Do you feel such an inning should count as an immaculate inning because the pitcher did it himself? Strikeouts and unassisted put out, is that immaculate because he didn't really rely on the defense behind him? Good question,

but I would say no. I think an immaculate inning is specifically about three strikeouts on nine pitches. It's not just about doing it yourself or you could have a much shorter inning where you had a bunch of unassisted put outs or whatever. So I think the strikeouts are key to the accomplishment. Also, a couple of responses to our discussion of Ozzy Albies and his strange foot fracture on a swing the other day. Jack notes, I thought it was interesting that this isn't the first time Ozzy has fractured something while taking a swing. In September of 2016, he suffered an alacranon fracture in his right elbow during a AA playoff

game. That's the pointy bone in your elbow, I believe. He even required surgery to fix it. I think this was maybe even brought up in a few places as a possible reason he signed the contract that he did with some speculation that maybe he was overly cautious about freak injuries and took an early low offer to get something done quickly.

I wouldn't blame him if that's the case because it's got to be scary to swing if you're Ozzy Alpes now and you're breaking elbows and feet on what seem like fairly routine swings. I'll link to a video of that elbow break as well. He fouled a pitch off, he inside outed a swing, somehow broke his elbow. Scary stuff. The worst is when a pitcher breaks his elbow throwing a pitch, but I understand that a bit more just considering the stresses that your arm is subjected to. It's a wonder they don't break their arms more often. And Kyla wrote in to say, I once fractured my foot while dancing around my living room.

I had just turned 21 when this happened, young and spry. I wasn't even engaging in high-level athletics. Enjoy walking. I will, Kyla. Thanks for that thought. She actually fractured her heel. Didn't need crutches or a cast or anything, but she says it was a bizarre way to injure herself. The human body, indeed. And two responses from Mike. We did a pedantic question and answer about the baseball diamond and whether it actually is a diamond shape. We discussed it being a bit of a misnomer. It's sort of a square.

It's a subject of some pedantic controversy. Well, Mike notes, isn't the layout of the four bases still a baseball diamond? As we learned earlier this year, second base isn't centered. It's slightly farther from home plate than we'd expect. That's right. We talked about that. So there are two very slight obtuse angles on the baseball diamond and a very slight acute angle.

I guess that's right. Maybe that does kind of technically make it a diamond. Listener Zach says if you were going to be extremely precise, you would call it a baseball kite. But this is not one to be pedantic about in Zach's opinion or in mine. And lastly, that same Mike writes in, in response to the Car Shield discussion, to send us a commercial that aired during Twins games on the radio last year, an attempt to break the all-time record in baseball puns in an ad read. Here it is. Ready to break the baseball pun record for a radio ad? Here we go. Looking for a home run on your next home project? Don't

strike out by using someone out of left field who makes errors, balks at your needs, isn't safe, and gives you the squeeze by charging double. Your home improvement company aced my window project, and working with them was a walk in the park. You can count on them to avoid curveballs and save you time. Plus, they clean up, which is a big relief. Your home improvement company is a huge hit in twins territory. Visit yourhomeimprovementco.com

today. The funny thing is, if not for those dings, I might not have noticed that it wasn't just a normal baseball radio ad. That's sort of how they all sound. That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening and thanks to those of you who support the show on Patreon. If you want to be one of them, you can go to patreon.com slash effectively wild and sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, get yourself access to some perks, and help us stay ad-free, aside from the many other ads that we referenced on this episode. Thanks today to Clemente, Bradley Herring, Joe Camerata, J-Mad, and Thomas Schiavone. Thanks to all of you. Join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod.

And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectivelywild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. And we will be back to talk to you hear or hear.