Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 204: The Yankees and Luck/How We Watch Baseball/Consuming Scouting Reports

Episode Date: May 16, 2013

Ben and Sam team up for a simulpodcast with Carson Cistulli of FanGraphs and FanGraphs Audio to discuss whether the Yankees have been lucky, the best way to watch baseball, and the value of old scouting reports.

Do you guys mind if I hit record? I don't mind. Ben might mind, but do you hear my tea boiling? I do. I have tea boiling. Okay. Wait, you do mind, Ben, or you do hear the tea? I consent to being recorded.

I do hear the tea. All right. This is great. This is All right. This is great. This is already great. This is fantastic already. Good morning and welcome to episode 204 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast on BaseballPerspectives.com. I'm here with Ben Lindberg, of course. I'm Sam Miller.

And today we're joined as well by Carson Stooley for the second annual Crossover podcast. While we are recording this, Carson is also recording for Fangraphs Audio. Carson, how are you doing? I'm well. How are you? Have you considered that you're missing an opportunity to have a baseball-themed podcast name, such as Swinging Bunt or perhaps... That's really the only thing. Why don't you call it Swinging Bunt or perhaps that's really the only thing. Why don't you call it Swinging Bunt?

Yeah, that's a reasonable question. I prefer something that's just more plainly descriptive. He's a company man. Well, no. Did you have fringe average? What do you guys do you get did you have what now fringe average

what do you guys do we are we are effectively wild we have effectively wild we have a fringe average as well yeah um oh i could call it maybe uh i could call it dropped third strike owing to the irreverent nature of the podcast i'm gonna call out of left field perhaps we actually have an out of left field column. Yes, Matthew Corey's column. So sorry, that is taken. That is taken. Well, yeah, I guess that's it then.

No, I prefer, I like very descriptive words. So audio, this for me is appealing to me. I can guarantee it's not appealing to many people. If our numbers are any indication. can guarantee it's not appealing to many people um if our numbers are any indication yeah that's yeah yeah miserable really just i mean if you want to keep it on the audio tip you could call it for instance sounds of the game or crack of that crack of yeah the um yeah that's a good point uh I will take that into consideration, Sam Miller. Okay.

You are hundreds of episodes in at this point, so you're not obligated to change names midstream. Yeah. Okay, yeah. I appreciate that, Ben Lindberg. You're welcome. So all parties have been heard from on this matter. Was that your – That's my topic. That was your topic. Okay. All right. Very good. Was that the top? That was your top book.

Okay. All right. Very good. We all actually did bring topics. We have three topics today. Carson, what topic did you bring? I'm going to ask about your strategies for consuming baseball, for consuming live baseball, whether it be MLB TV, actual broadcast television, radio, et cetera. Sure. Ben?

broadcast television, radio, etc. Sure. Ben? I wanted to talk about the ways that the 2013 Yankees are or are not like the 2012 Orioles. Interesting. That's a good slate pitch.

Right. Yes, well I'm wasting it here. And I'd like to talk about the goldmine of scouting reports that we've all recently been exposed to on the internet. Excellent. Look forward to it, Sam Miller. Okay. So, Ben, why don't you start because you have a topic that's real sure uh okay so i've been i've been pondering i guess uh how much how much credit a a general manager such as brian cashman uh or or a manager such as joe gerardi should should be given for the success of the yankees this year and the way that they have succeeded uh and it seems like there are some parallels to what we saw from the Orioles last season,

but also some ways in which they are dramatically different. I guess we spent most of last season talking about the Orioles' run differential and how it did not seem to agree with their actual record, especially early in the season. And we talked a lot about their record in one-run games, especially how it was excellent. They went 29-9 in one-run games. And we attributed that, I guess, largely to luck

as well as to a good bullpen. I guess informed minds can disagree about the extent to which one or the other deserves credit for that. But the Yankees have the same sort of one-run winning thing going on right now. They're eight and two in one-run games, which is actually a higher winning percentage than 29 and nine. And they also seem to have the pretty good bullpen going on, or the pretty good back of the bullpen. And they have a run differential that is pretty good, not quite as good as their actual record,

but not so different that we would forecast some sort of massive decline. But then when you start looking at the individual performances and taking in triple slash lines of players like Travis Hafner and Vernon Wells and maybe to a lesser extent Lyle Overbay, you start to wonder, I guess, whether that was anticipated or whether we shouldn't really give the Yankees any more credit for that than just sort of signing those guys as stopgaps or trading for those guys as stopgaps because they needed a warm body and those

warm bodies have produced more than, more than we expected and maybe more than the Yankees have expected or whether Brian Cashman or Joe Girardi actually has some skill in getting more out of players like this than you would expect. I think there is a perception maybe that there is some sort of Yankees magic when it comes to resuscitating seemingly undead players like this, whether it be Wells or Hafner or Itro last season, and otherwise rational writers who would require evidence for things like this

would maybe accept the idea that there is some sort of Yankee talent to resuscitating players like this. Which is so interesting because there's that flip side, which is the narrative that's been around since like at least the early 80s, that if you're good and you go to New York, it kills you. Yeah, or at least with certain people, I guess there's the narrative that certain people cannot handle New York in a way that you don't tend to hear about,

say, players not being able to handle Milwaukee, for instance. So I don't know. I think I might write about that tonight and kind of look at whether there is any evidence that the Yankees are better at this than any other team. But I wanted to get your guys' thoughts on, I don't know, how much of this is fluke, how much is good planning or ability to find underappreciated talents, and how the rest of the season will play out.

I guess it's different than the Orioles in that the Yankees have established players on the way back or back now or almost back so that if their luck kind of subsides as the season goes on, maybe they will be able to replace it with actual talent. But discuss. Well, Sam, would you mind if I said a thing? Please. Yeah. So with regard to this point concerning Yankees magic, whether it exists or not,

certainly I have nothing definitive to say on the matter. However, I do remember at one point Cody Ross mentioning, I don't know whether, it must have been an interview I read with him where he was talking about how miserable he was when he was in Miami, nay Florida, with the Marlins. And that the organization was generally not like a, it was not necessarily a fun place to be no fault necessarily of the field management or his teammates, but just that the organization seemed like it was not particularly well run. And of course, Cody Ross had decent,

if not necessarily excellent seasons as in Marlin. And that's, you know, it's very possible. That's just because that was his talent level. And then he went to San Francisco and I actually don't know, I'll be honest, if he was better or not better, but I do know that he was, that he was good in the,

in the very right time, such that his legacy became, I guess, well, he had one is the point. People knew who Cody Ross was all of a sudden, because he had, well, he had like what the point. People knew who Cody Ross was all of a sudden because he had, he had like what, three or four home runs in the playoff series. He did something good.

Anyway, the point being that, and then of course he went to Boston and now he's in Arizona. Now he's like a real player. That could just be a function of getting older and his name being around more. It could be a function of playing in larger markets like San Francisco, Boston, et cetera. It does seem as though that because now that's a case where if you're playing for the Marlins and then you're playing in markets that care like the Giants and the Red Sox do, that you might be more inclined to at least reach your peak performance.

That seems like it's a possibility. But I would be interested, I guess, in the construction of a study that would be gauged to measure such a thing. And I guess the study would be interesting in the sense that it would first fall to whomever was conducting the study to essentially to rate the affability of different organizations. And that seems like it would require a lot of anecdotal information. It's likely not to happen,

but I would like to see a sort of ranking of organizations that are best down to worst to play for. I mean, I assume that the Marlins are actually an organization for which players don't particularly care to play, except for the fact that they're getting a chance in the major leagues. And then perhaps, I don't know, who knows, maybe an organization like the Brewers, for example,

is one for which players do like to play because it's, you know, there a people you know I mean like for example Milwaukee or Miller Park gets pretty excellent attendances especially relative to the population of the city So maybe that's a good thing But I don't know that that would be the most exciting thing for me at least in beginning to ask the question of Do the Yankees have a certain magic? Do organizations generally, do players like playing for some organizations other than others? So Ben, a couple of weeks ago, weren't we asked

something about the Yankees and Pocota and whether Pocota is constantly too low on the Yankees or too high on the Yankees or something like that? Yes. Mm-hmm. And the question was asked from the perspective that there must be something biased about Pakoda, if that were the case. But in this sort of scenario that you're suggesting, whereby either Brian Cashman is better at identifying these players or there's something about playing for the Yankees that makes them better, it would actually be that these players are, in a way, biased toward outperforming Pakoda, if that were true.

And remind me, we found nothing, is that right? Yeah, I think we found something like a win per season, or a little less even, that the Yankees had exceeded their preseason projection. And we sort of attributed that either to nothing or maybe to their tendency to be in contention and trade for players at midseason, which is not something you can account for in a preseason projection, or at least something that we are not currently accounting for. Yeah, that sounds very likely. I mean, they're always going to be able to purchase a player at the deadline. So we talked about whether it would be wise to insert some sort of fudge factor for teams like the Yankees or maybe just the Yankees. Or I guess we said if

a team is forecasted to be a contender, then you would give them some small boost on top of that with the idea that they would be in a position to be buyers. Yeah. But anyway, if individual Yankees were outperforming for whatever reason, it would show up in them beating projections. Although, I guess theoretically, like we mentioned a minute ago, there might be other players who are just the opposite. So I guess if you were studying this, you would want to see whether there was a larger spread in each direction that would cancel each other out. But, I mean, my guess is that that would be a lot of research for nothing conclusive or nothing even particularly suggestive.

conclusive or nothing even particularly suggested. I did, strangely enough, I talked to a player yesterday who just sort of tossed in as an aside when we were talking about why some players, you know, why some teams do better and some teams do worse than you expect, tossed in as an aside the idea that playing in New York or Boston makes players better, just feeling special to be there, you know. And he was, I think he was actually, he actually talking about it in the context of getting an extension. If you're a fourth year player and your team gives you an extension, you feel like this club values you and it gives a little bit of boost to your confidence. If they say, oh, we'll go year to year with you, they're basically telegraphing to you,

we think you're going to fall apart next year or something. And so similarly, he said that there was, you know, there was a Boston slash New York factor where you feel like, you know, you just got hired by, you know, like it'd be like if one of us got hired by Sports Illustrated or something, it would either make you feel really great because you made it to the top of the game or it would make you feel wrapped with pressure and you would probably collapse in shame and anxiety like all three of us would do. Yeah, that sounds more likely, that latter one. Yeah, so I mean, I don't know. There are mechanisms in place that would explain this phenomenon if you saw it. I tend not to think that we've seen it because I think

we would notice if there was a, well, I mean, I would think we would notice, but maybe we wouldn't notice. Maybe nobody has looked at it. But as for the Yankees this year, they are, you know, we talked last year about the Orioles' luck, and we also talked about the A's luck, which was a totally different kind of luck. In one luck, the front office got lucky, and the crappy players they signed played well. And in the other kind of luck, the team got lucky by playing crappy and somehow winning anyway. And the Yankees are like maybe a third of each kind of luck and a third of actually being like underneath it all like a pretty good team. I mean, even in their injured state,

yeah, they're getting this random value out of Vernon Wells and Lyle Overbay. But, you know, they're also getting good value out of Robbie Cano, who is a superstar, and they're getting value out of Brett Gardner, who is a very good player. And they're getting value out of Hiroki Kuroda and CeCe Sabathia and Mariano Rivera. I mean, most of their, you know, at the very top of their Warped leaderboard, you see a lot of good names. So there's a genuineness, I think, to this team that you wouldn't say about the Orioles last year at all. to this team that you wouldn't say about the Orioles last year at all. I would also submit at the site recently of Fangraphs, Jesse Wolfersberger did some work on the 2012 Orioles as representative of a team that had succeeded,

as we've mentioned here, as a team that succeeded had succeeded as we've mentioned as we mentioned here is a team that succeeded uh... in one run games uh... any looked at he looked at other teams uh... study i think uh... two thousand seven two thousand levin to see uh... what the qualities were at the belong to teams that excel in one run games uh... in addition to

uh... aids strong relief corps uh... mean in particular it appears as though it was strikeout rates among relievers, he also found the teams with higher isolated power were more likely to be winning one-run games. Which, this could apply to the Yankees. They don't have the highest mark by that measure at this point. I think that they're, you know they're 10th or something like that. But they do seem, with their roster, to have potential. And of course, every year they have a team that's probably top third or top five in isolated slugging. Was there a hypothesis for why isolated power would be relevant? Because that seems like a statistic that would intuitively lead to greater margins of victory

and loss. Good point. Sam Miller. Sorry, unless I were to reread it literally this minute and just let the podcast go quiet, I would not know. But yeah, I guess because

you can hit a home run. You hit one home. You hit a home run. You hit a home run and then the team wins. That's your one run. QED. There we go. Makes sense to me. Good job. Yeah, so there we go. I think we've established that. Makes sense to me. Yeah. Good job. Yeah, so there we go.

I think we've established all the answers. All right. Carson, why don't you keep talking now about your topic? Oh, yeah, very good. So recently, actually, on this, on Fangraphs Audio, of which this is currently half, Fangraphs Audio, recently I had a conversation with a colleague and almost friend

at this point, near friend, Robert J. Bauman, who writes for NotGraphs. And we got to discussing techniques or strategies for consuming baseball. Not necessarily like, these were not necessarily tips for listeners because neither Bauman nor I have really any idea of what we're doing with our own lives. But mostly it was an opportunity to share, perhaps learn from each other, if not from each other's strengths, then certainly from each other's weaknesses, which is the sort of thing that friends can do for each other. And we were talking about ways we consume. I had asked him, I said, well, you live in Milwaukee. He lives in Milwaukee. I said, you live in Milwaukee. You must listen quite a bit to games on the radio, as one would if he or she lived in Milwaukee, because the very excellent Bob Euchre, of course, does the radio there. like for example recently he was putting together some chat books like manually so what he would do is he would clear off his desk and he would have you'd be putting together the chat books manually

and then next to his desk he has a like a tall trash can he would put like a piece of cardboard over it put his computer on that open up his computer and then watch games on mlb.tv using that i know that i for example one thing I will frequently do is while I'm working, especially at night or mid-afternoon for Ben Lindbergh, what I will do is I'll have a game on using MLB.TV on my PlayStation 3. I'll have a game on so it's sort of in the corner of the eye. And usually at this point it's going to be a West Coast game. So, for example, if the Dodgers are playing at home, I'll frequently watch those games, just kind of the corner of my eye,

but also to have Vin Scully's voice on because it's reassuring and a nice thing to sort of have keeping you company, especially in the dark at night when it's not just dark outside, but it's also dark inside one's thoughts. So that's it. And we talked about maybe watching games on the computer. Like, for example, I subscribe to MILB.TV. However, I will frequently not just sit down to watch a full game. Usually I will utilize that to go look at a particular pitcher or a particular batter. But yeah, but I will I will

generally not just sit down and watch like nine innings like at my desk or whatever. I find it not pleasant. So I'm curious. And let's see who answered. Well, Sam, you I guess I maybe I begin. Well, let's let's start with Ben Lindbergh And, of course, watching games live at the stadium is another thing, another possibility. And perhaps there are some that I've neglected. But I'm curious as to what your strategies are for consuming live baseball. So I have the PS3 set up, and that is probably the primary way that I watch baseball at this point. the primary way that I watch baseball at this point. My work computer is not in the same room as my PlayStation.

So what I do have is multiple monitors, as well as a TV that is connected to my computer and is not connected to a cable box. So its sole purpose is to serve as sort of a third monitor. So that is above my two actual computer monitors. So what I will do is kind of stick baseball on that third monitor where I can glance up at it from time to time. But I do have difficulty multitasking where baseball is concerned, I think. I can succeed at multitasking where some tasks are concerned, but if there is an actual entertaining baseball game on any screen in my vicinity, I find myself not really capable of doing any work whatsoever. And so that is kind of a problem. Because of my sort of strange

sleeping schedule, I am often writing or editing during prime baseball playing time, or sometimes stressing about the podcast and how I have nothing to talk about. Um, and so generally I might have it on in the background, but lately I've been, I've been more of a consumer of, of highlight shows actually, uh, just because it, it is, it is a more efficient, less, less pleasurable in some ways, but more efficient way to consume baseball and stay apprised of baseball developments. Can you talk about your go-to? on MLB Network, not because I have any special affinity for that particular show or because I think it's better produced than any other highlight show, but it is just kind of always on in the middle of the night when I am laboring. So I put it on and kind of see what happened

that way. But during the week, it is rare that I will sit down and watch a game from start to finish. That sounds about right. Do you know, quick pitch, that's on MLB Network, do you know if that's available via the internet? I do not know that.

That's fine. We've done no research, it should be noted. Let that be the case. Sam Miller, I defer to you now. Yeah, so I actually have a hard time watching baseball, which is not to say that I don't watch baseball. I watch a great deal of it. But I have a hard time enjoying it now for a few reasons, primarily because I'm very unproductive when I do it. And even though it is my job to do it,

it still doesn't, even after these years, it does not feel like my job. It still feels like I'm shirking. And for instance, when I'm at home with my family and I'm watching baseball, it feels to me as well as to my wife like I'm not doing work. And it's hard's hard to it's

hard for me to watch baseball um especially because like um I have a great deal of shame over the way that I watch baseball for fantasy baseball outcomes still like you know I even like I in that case it really feels like if I'm watching a pitcher who I'm rooting for for fantasy baseball reasons, there's no real intellectual work going on in my head. I'm completely wasting that time. And then I feel like I'm using work as an excuse to have a totally pointless hobby. There's a phenomenon, and I forget the word for it, but it's something like gamers' regret or gamers' remorse or something like that, which is the sort of feeling that video game players have after playing for a long time where the adrenaline in their brain all just sort of dries up when

they quit and they realize that they've just spent like nine hours staring unblinkingly at a screen and they feel sadness. There's like a sorrow to it. Yes, that sounds, that sounds, yes. I have experienced that. Yeah, and not just gaming, but it's true. Anytime you do one sort of like objectively, well, everything is meaningless. I think we can all agree on that, right?

Yes. But extra meaningless, I guess. Meaningless with a bullet. Yeah. Yeah, so I feel that. I feel that at the end of a lot of... I have a period of time each day when I can work before I pick up my daughter. And at the end of that time, if I've watched baseball in a particular way, which is to say for entertainment or

self-interest rather than as an intellectual pursuit, I feel that sorrow and that shame. And in particular, I didn't answer the question quite so specifically as you guys did, but I generally watch on my computer on MLB TV. And MLB TV is an amazing thing. I don't want to make this sound like I'm saying anything bad about MLB TV because it's an amazing thing. But it is not quite as soothing as, for instance, staring at a beautiful sunset. It can be a bit, I don't know, glitchy on your eyes to stare at this screen and have it be slightly less smooth than reality and to be this small box slightly less smooth than reality and to be this small box on a slightly blurry screen. And it messes with your head to some degree.

And so I think there's also a physical reaction I have when I watch too much baseball. This is a weird thing to be saying, is it not? To be complaining about – No, no, no. I think it's interesting though. First of all, Sam Miller, you know that I love you. And I love you even more now because of,

I sense this about you, I guess, but now it's very clear that you do, most of the things you do, you do out of a deep sense of shame or with a deep sense of shame or guilt in close attendance. And that's great.

I think that's excellent. Because what I hear you saying is that even though to think and write about baseball is your job, when you watch baseball for pleasure, you feel as though you're doing something wrong. Yes. And that's excellent. I think that's great. Never change. Yeah, but I think the other thing is is interesting too is

like and it also just has to do with something that i'm sure will receive zero sympathy from anyone who likes thinking and writing about baseball but does not get paid for it um is that there if you write baseball maybe for all um outlets all news sources but certainly I know that as an as an internet baseball writer there's not really any beginning or end to the day officially and so you feel as though you're always sort of expected to be I know that I always feel as though I'm always expected to be sort of half working or if even if I'm doing something that's like nominally leisure like for leisure purposes like I will always sort of be checking to make sure that I don't necessarily know what would have happened because God knows Dave Cameron at all did

not expect me to write real analysis but yeah it's a I always feel as though I just sort of have my eye cast for this maybe you, you know, at the very least, maybe Matt Harvey has thrown an excellent slider that requires, that needs to be rendered into animated GIF form. You know, so there's always sort of that tug that, well, it's the sort of thing when you're, you know, be careful what you wish for because it might come true. It has come true and it's excellent that it's come true. But nothing is always going to be excellent. I mean, you know, it's just how life is. It's burdened by fear and misery. I find that I treat a baseball game now as potential content, I guess,

more than recreation in that if anything notable or odd or interesting happens in that game, I feel a pressure to post about it in order to have something to show for the time that I spent watching that game. So often there will be something weird like that. Someone will swing in a pitch that is three feet outside, and I will wonder how that ranks among pitches that people swung at that were really far outside. And then I will stop watching the game, and I will go look that up, and maybe it will actually be notable, and then suddenly I'll be writing something about it,

and I am no longer watching or enjoying the game. But I got something out of it. Yeah, I enjoy that. That's what I enjoy most. I really enjoy... I also watch now looking for something to make a gif of basically or to look up on Playindex. And to me, the feeling when you switch from the game to actually producing something that came out of the game to writing something out of it

or to looking up something about it or even just a tweet that is useful. A tweet that is useful. That, to me, kicks in a different part of my brain that's deeply satisfied. It's when I don't do that that I feel a bit odd. I was a radio kid growing up. I guess a lot of us probably were because unless you were a Cubs or a Braves fan, there'd be maybe 40 games on a year.

They never aired home games, for instance, when I was a kid. So I was always a radio guy and I would do chores while I listened on the radio. So baseball was never a front-of-the-brain pursuit for me. It was always the thing that I listened to while I was doing other things. And I would listen to every minute of every game in the pregame and the postgame, but it would be while doing chores or while playing ball or while sorting cards, always while doing something else. And I find that I still to this day enjoy baseball most when it's on a radio, when I'm

outside pulling weeds or when I'm doing the dishes and I'm listening rather than watching. But MLB TV is so tempting. It's hard not to watch if you can watch. Right. That changes. I mean, your body does things. When you sit down, when you go from a standing position to a sitting position, your body actually reacts in a lot of different ways.

It basically thinks that you're going to sleep and it shuts down. And it's not healthy for us to sit. It's extremely healthy for us to sit. It's extremely healthy for us to stand. So I think anybody who has sat at a desk or sat at a TV screen for eight hours knows that it does suck a little bit of energy out of you and changes your mood. So I don't know. I have to be somewhat diligent about that. But i love that baseball exists more than i have a a huge desire to watch it uh uh a lot of times well i will actually i'll add two things uh one i think that yeah one of the things to which that draws me most of the game is the fact that it's ubiquity

uh i mean basically you know most times a day uh there's there's you know there there's a possibility there's going to be a game on certainly as you get to a possibility there's going to be a game on. Certainly, as you get to the evening, there's going to be a game on. And yeah, I used it. I mean, my fondest memories of baseball are listening to it on WEI radio out of Boston as I was falling asleep as a younger man. Especially if there was a west coast game that would be like that would really nail it and i would always every night i would listen to games as i was

falling asleep and that was kind of my experience with it and it was nice to know that as i was going to bed there's gonna be something it was like it's it's so dependable you know it's like you you understand like the the narrative structure of a baseball game becomes so familiar. And then, of course, from that, there are rough edges and anomalies that occur. But the main part of it is that it's very comforting. It's the same voices. There was always Joe Castiglione as I was going back. So that was always very pleasant. The second thing I'll say is that I've actually started watching baseball standing up.

I was not expecting to say that. But my wife and I, we always have leftovers. And because she knows I cannot take care of myself, my wife always leaves the leftovers for me. And when I come back from the cafe in the morning, I come back around noon or one, I will stand up in the kitchen and put on MLB TV either for a present game or a game from the day before. And I will watch that way. And it's actually much more pleasant. put on MLB TV either for a present game or a game from the day before, and I will watch that way. And it's actually much more pleasant.

That's actually the way in which I've enjoyed watching baseball the most in recent years. If I could just, my bottom line for the answer to this question is if somebody asked me for advice on how to enjoy baseball more, I would probably recommend that for a season just don't watch a game on tv just uh cut your mlbt subscription for a season um and just listen just do a season listening and uh you know i i don't do it i i if your job is to to watch games then i wouldn't recommend it in that case um but in the same way that i think that we all fantasize about not playing fantasy baseball, but we can't bring ourselves to do it. Well, we all.

That's very general. I really like fantasy baseball a lot. Well, I do too, but you don't ever fantasize about not doing it? Fantasize about not engaging my fantasies? No, I don't. Well, and maybe it's a little different. So you're not playing baseball? I don't actually, because I don't have a team in which I have any sort of rooting interest.

So my rooting interest is in my two fantasy teams. Yeah. So I actually experience zero of the guilt that you mentioned before when I cheer for this or that pitcher. Because I feel like, say I were still a Red Sox fan, on the one hand I could cheer for Clay Buchholz. And in that way, that would be a thing I was doing. And if Clay Buchholz did well, I would feel good. And if he did poorly, then I would feel less good. But if Clay Buchholz is on my fantasy team and he pitches well,

then what it does is not only is it good for my fantasy team, it signals to my league mates, who are also my friends, that I know more about baseball than they do. And that is an important currency. It is the most valuable currency, even more valuable than the pound at the height of its value. My problem with – my shame about fantasy baseball is not that I'm rooting for morally suspect outcomes. It's that I have no discipline with regards to monitoring. And so I will put virtually any activity aside so that I can check to see how Lonnie Chisinau did

today. And there's a, I mean, I've spent, I've basically spent 17 years of my life clicking refresh on Yahoo and it disgusts me how many times I've clicked refresh, especially because I am not exaggerating. I am a Yahoo refresher. That is how I check my team is clicking refresh on Yahoo. They have extensions these days that will do that for you. No joke. I will not do that because it's too easy. I need the thrill like a slot machine junkie. I actually need

the tiny, tiny adrenaline hit that comes from refresh and uncertainty. If it updates manually, it's no pleasure at all for me. That's actually, yeah. I will actually, I'll be watching a game sometimes on MLB TV and it will be one second behind the Yahoo or vice versa, whichever one I'm more engaged in. But say I'm watching it and it's one second behind the Yahoo and I will make sure that I can't see the Yahoo refresh because it will spoil the outcome for me.

Like five seconds later, the outcome that I'm actually counting on, and I don't want to have the outcome spoiled by the thing. It's bizarre. I mean, my brain is wired differently when I'm doing fantasy baseball, and I don't particularly like it. So that's why I fantasize about breaking that. I gave up fantasy a few years ago because I was noticing these symptoms of addictive behavior that clearly you continue to be afflicted with. So I have replaced fantasy baseball to some extent with, I think, reading about baseball or consuming baseball via Google Reader primarily for now while it still exists.

And I feel kind of a constant pressure to be reading about baseball, which is mostly an enjoyable activity. And I seek out articles about baseball, but I also feel kind of obligated to be aware of everything that is going on, just sort of to be informed, to make sure that I'm not duplicating an article that someone else just wrote as a form of sort of opposition research or for inspiration or what have you. And doing that kind of constantly throughout the day, I guess, fulfills some portion of my need, my daily requirement, recommended daily requirement for baseball, so that by the time

we get to the point where games actually begin to be played, I've been reading about baseball on and off for hours and hours. And I know that I will do the same thing the next day, so that whatever actually transpires in those games, I will find out about via text, which maybe is not as pleasant in some ways as actually watching it. But I know I'm going to be aware of it. And so when I then have to start writing or editing, it is difficult to give myself over to that activity completely. that activity completely. Well, good.

Carson, can I just real quick, I was thinking that you could name your podcast the accounts and descriptions of this game. Oh, yeah, but I was going to call it simulcast with baseball prospectus. No, I mean, I mean, I mean, always. Accounts and descriptions. The accounts and descriptions of this game. What if I just do accounts and descriptions?

I think that's... People will recognize the language. Do you think? Yeah, accounts and descriptions. I think so. Okay. I think it's... To be honest, I think it's just short of full recognition.

I think that people will... I mean, it sounds somewhat like an accounting phrase, for instance. It sounds like something that you might hear from the accounting department. Accounting descriptions of this game is very long, though. It's not a great title. The podcast that shall not be disseminated. Ooh. Better.

All right. We should move on to our third title. Yeah, we should move on. Yeah. Yeah. The Hall of Fame has posted on its website a vast trove of old scouting reports. You and I and the other you, not knowing which you I was referring to in that case, have all, I'm sure, consumed a number of these. And I just wanted to know if from each of you, what you enjoy about them and whether you think that there's going to be further use for them in your lives or whether these are just pure candy.

I guess I'll begin. I mean, I think the natural, the first thing that you gravitate towards is a report that is spectacularly wrong or spectacularly right. Just a player who a scout pegged perfectly when no one else expected him to be as good as he became or just someone who completely missed out on a player's potential those are just they're sort of entertaining um they are entertaining but i guess my question is that i can't i'm trying to figure out what the significance of either of those are i mean we know that baseball is unpredictable and we know that in some way you know that that some scouts do get things i mean that scouts are better than us so we know that both of those things are true uh are these simply confirming things that we've already internalized and we like them because they're comforting? I guess so. Or yeah, I mean, just maybe the fact that a professional

who is paid to evaluate players could be so wrong, maybe makes us feel better about our own predictive powers, possibly. I think there's potential for research, certainly with scouting reports. I'm not sure that these scouting reports are presented in a form that lends itself to research. Just in that, you kind of have to look at one, I mean, it's not really in a easily transferable to a database format where you could kind of have everything in fields that you could query and do some sort of analysis with. It's kind of a clunky format that is difficult to do that sort of analysis on. And non-standardized and very far from inclusive. I mean, there are probably, I mean, how many scouting reports do you think are filed about a player in his career? Not counting advanced scouting, just as a draftee slash minor leaguer, 300, 400?

For all teams put together. It has to be a lot. Yes. And we're seeing one to six of these. I will say my primary interest in them was in seeing, I mean, it was exciting. The idea, I think, is probably more exciting to me than the actual presentation, not to say that the Hall of Fame isn't a poor job at all in presenting them, but as you know, I don't necessarily know how to use them quite yet.

I was most excited for the potential writing opportunities, and we mentioned this earlier with regard to watching a game i was um i thought grant brisby did an excellent job at baseball nation of uh looking at five what five little known scouting reports or whatever uh essentially rewriting uh using the same font um reports for derek jeter at that time or r.a dickie uh was very amusing. I mean, insofar as full of lies, funny. And then I know Jeremy Bachman, who writes for NotGraphs, he also did a piece called, so he has a character whose voice he writes called Hopeless Joe.

And Hopeless Joe is not, he's not a happy man. And so, for example, he submits Hopeless Joe's Scatter Report of B.J. Upton. Mostly a Hopeless Joe wonders why we bother at all, and he says the same things about B.J. Upton. I read that and enjoyed it. What's that? I said I read that and I enjoyed it. Oh, okay. Yes, very good.

And, yes, that was the point, I hope. Yeah, so I think that was actually my main interest. I mean, it's fun to see what the Wade Boggs won. I saw Wade Boggs won today, recently, maybe. And Wade Boggs, he's going to need to learn something with the bat. He's going to need to be better with his bat.

But of course, he ended up being one of the best with his bat. That was what he was good at. So it's hard to say. But that scout probably did other things that were good. So it's hard to say. But that scout probably did other things that were good. So it's hard to make any conclusions, I guess, draw any conclusions. I suppose it's

mostly interesting at this point for sort of voyeuristic purposes, where you can kind of see what's going on in organizations, at least organizations as they existed 25 years ago. Yeah, scouts basically do two things when they're looking at players at that level they they describe and then they extrapolate they predict and i i think i think it's probably

not that helpful as a predictive that to look back at what their predictions are to be honest because they're going to be some of them are going to be spectacularly right and some are going to be spectacularly wrong and i i honestly don't think we can learn all that much about which ones they're right about or which ones they're wrong about because we're not seeing them on and, you know, things happen. I do think that the descriptive elements of it are probably interesting and useful. When I was a news reporter, anytime you were writing about anybody, the first thing you were supposed to do is basically check the archives and maybe check LexisNexis to make sure that you're supposed to do is basically check the archives and maybe check LexisNexis to make

sure that you're not dealing with a criminal who is like the guy leading the fundraiser isn't actually someone horrible who you're going to be really embarrassed the day the story comes out. And I feel like in a similar way, although for completely different reasons, I feel like anybody I write about now, the first thing to do is to go look and see if there are any of these out there because it's a rare snapshot of getting to have a player described to you totally honestly by a person who knows. We rarely get that. We get descriptions from announcers, from broadcasters, from writers, and from self-interested GMs

or self-interested managers or from our own flawed eyes. It's very rare that you get a totally honest account from somebody who's good. And so I think that for your own writing about players and for your own analysis of players, it's useful to see this snapshot that helps you set a clear trajectory from a point that is true. Now, part of the problem is that, as far as I can tell, these are mainly players who are retired or past the age of mystery. So I don't think you're going to be able to look up Steven Pierce, for instance, and read a Steven Pierce scouting profile. I could be wrong. Have you guys seen many contemporary players?

Any contemporary players? I think they would all be veterans who are approaching the end of their careers at this point. Yeah. Or some. So it'd be, you know, like I see that there's a Lance Berkman one in here. I mean, there's some of this. And so I'll look up, especially for veterans, I'll look it up.

But it would be even more amazing. The closer they get to, I mean, the more there are, the better it'll be, and the more contemporary they are, the better it'll be. And that's it. I've got to go. All right. So, Ben, do you want to do your closing, or should we do mine first? We don't really have a closing. We just kind of say, that's it, it's over. Oh, well, can I do my closing? Yes, by all means.

I want to thank some people. I want to thank Sam Miller, for example. Sam, thank you. Yeah. I want to thank Ben Lindberg, editor. I guess editor. You're an editor of some sort. Editor-in-chief.

Editor-in-chief of Baseball Respect. I want to thank you, Ben Lindberg. You're welcome. Okay. That has been Sam Miller, Ben Lindberg. I'm Carson Sestouli, and this has been Sam Miller, Ben Lindbergh. I'm Carson Stooley, and this has been Fangraphs Audio. And also not Fangraphs Audio.