Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2097: How to Direct a Baseball Broadcast

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the implications of Shohei Ohtani’s unprecedentedly deferred contract structure, whether the Ohtani signing and Juan Soto trade portend MLB imbalance driven by the bursting cable bundle (21:42), whether the Dodgers will ever be bad again (28:06), media hang-wringing over Friday’s false reports (35:58), and the Tyler O’Neill trade […]

I wanna hear about Shohei Otani, or Mike Trout with three arms. Hello and welcome to episode 2097 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. That's Shohei Otani. Man.

He's just full of surprises, isn't he? That man has never ceased to surprise us since he has come to our attention. Usually it's because of something that he does on the field. Now it's because of the contract, although there have been two different surprises, really. One was $700 million. That's a lot of money. Now we find out, finally, the precise structure. And it is weird.

It is extremely strange. So here's the deal, as reported by a friend of the show, Fabian Ardaia of The Athletic. Almost all of this thing is deferred. So we knew per previous reporting that most of it was deferred. Turns out that's an understatement. Yeah. So $68 million a year of the $70 million is deferred. So he's just making a mere $2 million a year while he's like actually playing

for the Dodgers here. And then he basically gets an enormous lump sum after that. So it's just all pushed to the end of his contract. And then the deferred money, 680 million, will be paid out without interest from 2034 to 2043. Yep. Man, this is wild. He was the best player in baseball, and so it made sense for him to be the best paid player in baseball. And also, he's just the most shocking, expectation-toppling player in baseball, and he has done it again via this contract. So I guess there are a couple things to mull over here.

Yeah. One, the implications for the Dodgers, which are maybe even more extreme than we had sussed out previously. Yeah. The other that I want to get into is why are we going through this whole 700 million rigamarole in the first place, right? Should we talk about just how this affects the Dodgers? Because it sounds like the actual CBT hit of this thing is going to be 46 million-ish. So it's not a lot. It's not even close to 70. Yeah, but like, so it is and it isn't, right? Because it's not a lot relative to 70 million. It's not a lot if you just take 700 million and cut it up over the course of the 10-year deal. But like, this is still a lot. I mean, he will have the highest individual CBT hit of anyone in baseball, I think, right? Yeah. So it's not that it's nothing. No, it's not a small amount. It's still a lot, but it puts them in this spot where they are able to go do other stuff. Like, they can, we've already updated what this means for them from a payroll perspective.

And they're not even projected to be through the first luxury tax threshold for next year. Like, right now, we have their estimated luxury tax payroll, like, rounds to 220 when when you bring in the change right so like that's a a lot relative to some other teams but the first luxury tax threshold for 2024 is 237 million dollars so their luxury tax their projected luxury tax for next year is still lower than a lot of teams, Ben. You know, like they're not at the bottom, but like both of the New York teams are ahead of them. Atlanta, Philly, Houston and the Rangers by just a little bit. The present value of this deal then comes down to still a record contract, but not by much compared to his former teammate, Mike Trout. It's still a big record for a free agent. But if you do the

depreciation here, it's 460, which is roughly what he was expected to get, I think, by many people. When I was talking to some front office people for an article after his injury, the consensus seemed to be somewhere between 400 and 500 with pretty big error bars. There's a lot of uncertainty, but it seems like that is kind of where it comes in once you factor in the time value of money. factor in the time value of money. So maybe it's not actually such a surprising number, or maybe it's an even more surprising number, because why go with that number, right? If ultimately the real value boils down to a lot lower. And so I wonder whether the $700 million then is just basically for bragging rights. It's basically for show. Like he will receive $700 million if they were paying this thing out in $1 bills, they would eventually have to give him $700 million of them. I don't know where he would store them, but he could buy a really,

really big house to store them all with the $700 million. But if the real present value of it is considerably lower, closer to the range of very high baseball contracts that we've seen before, it seems sort of like stretching it out just so that he or his agent could say this is the biggest contract ever given to a professional athlete, even though in no real way is it? Except in the most technical way, which would be fine, except that I think it's affected how this has been reported and interpreted because everyone was thinking 70 million a year. And when that switched to 46, everyone thought, oh, they're gaming the system somehow. They're circumventing the CBA. Like Passan called the 46 a huge discount for LA, but it's not really a discount. You know, he wasn't going to get 700 regardless. And he's just like, it's OK, give it to me later. The fact that he's getting 700 is because it's all later. I know this gets confusing. Yes. But he could have just said,

don't give me 700 million, give me 460. And it would have been the same CBT hit. It just wouldn't have been as big a number. I mean, but it's clear that the top line number being very, very big was apparently important to him because if it weren't important to him, he would have just done 10 years and 460 million and not messed around with getting paid until I will be almost 60 years old, Ben. So like that's actually the most important part of this is the like peering into the void that I've had to do over the last hour as I've grappled with these deferrals. Yeah, it's clear that it mattered. It's also clear that like on some level money doesn't matter to him insofar as it's fine for him to take $2 million a year in actual salary because he makes so much money in endorsements elsewhere that it's like. He makes so much money in endorsements elsewhere that it's like. That's the way in which it benefits the Dodgers, right? Because there is still the same CBT hit, but they're literally spending $2 million on Shoyo Tani for now, right? So they are saving money in that sense.

It's just not quite as dramatic as people are making it out to be. But that's still pretty significant because if he said, yeah, I want 46 million a year now and for the next 10 years, then the CBT would be the same. But also they would have to be spending 44 million dollars a year more in the short term and medium term. So it does seem, though, that that number was important to him

or important to his agent or important to both of them just to brag about. And he seems like the last person to brag publicly. It doesn't seem like he has a big head or he certainly doesn't show it, but he must be satisfied by this on some level. I mean, he should be. He is the best player in baseball and the best player in the sport. And now he's being paid the best too. But the 700, like 460 would have been a record too. So 700, that seems kind of calculated so that everyone would breathlessly report this is the biggest contract ever given to a professional athlete, which it isn't really. I mean, it is kind of, but it really isn't because if you compare it to the most expensive soccer players who are making 500, 600 plus and over a much shorter period of years and not deferred like this, I presume, then in that sense, this is nowhere close to those kinds of deals.

close to those kinds of deals. Yeah. Wow. I'm fascinated by this. And like, there's just like a bottomless, you know, you can defer as much as you want. Like there's no, the CBA allows you to defer as much as you want to. It's completely uncapped. And the thing about it is that like, generally players don't want to do that. I've gone round and round in my own head about whether we are going to get new rules around deferrals. When this hit, I thought to myself, we're going to get new rules around deferrals, which is funny because yesterday, Saturday, when did we record? A different day. I was like, eh, he's such a unicorn. Like, they're not going to, no one's going to care. And then I thought, oh, they're going to have to do rules around deferrals. And then I thought to myself, how many players want this, right? Like before it seemed like it was a team side issue because how do the Dodgers keep getting away with

this? Not that they're the only team that's ever done deferrals before, but you know, how many players are going to want to take this contract structure? Most of them are just going to say, give me $46 million a year. You know, like give me, you just give me a 10 year, $460 million deal. So I think that I'm back to thinking he's just a unicorn and we're not going to necessarily need like legislation around this question because most players aren't going to want to do this. And presumably like a version of this deal was on offer for other teams. But because of what mattered to Otani, he was like, I can get what I want in terms of money

and a top line number with the Dodgers. And I feel the best about where their competitive stakes shake out. Yes, maybe no one else would go for this, not just because he wants to win more than anyone else in the world wants to win, but because he is quite comfortable with the endorsement deals that are many multiple times more than any other baseball player in the world is making. Not that you can't be quite comfortable on a mere $2 million a year, but he doesn't have to scrimp and save. He could still be making $50 million even if he takes $2 million from the Dodgers just through the endorsement. So it is still a singular situation, isn't it, always with him? according to sources that MLB has proposed limiting deferrals in prior CBA negotiations,

but that the union has declined those limits because deferrals allow a player flexibility that allows a contract to be worth, let's say, $700 million instead of $460 million. So I get that. And yeah, it's not a loophole. Like it's right in there. They wrote it down that you can defer as much as you want. But I do wonder whether this will change something, you know, just because this is so extreme. Even if we never see another player who comes along and the circumstances aligned to get this kind of deal. Still, I wonder whether there will be a renewed push to change things. Yeah, I wonder. But I am kind of skeptical because it's like, and we're going to have to wait, you know, another couple of years.

And by the time the next CBA rolls around, will this be top of mind for anyone? Probably not. I wonder, though, whether the 700 serves him well in the long run. You know, we're diving into the weeds here and we're reading about CBA provisions and various rates and what the net present value of this is, most people are just seeing $700 million. And that's as far as it goes. So does that kind of put a target on his back a little bit more than just saying that he is barely the biggest baseball contract ever? Instead, it seems like it's by far he is the

outlier of outliers, which he kind of is in a way, but not as much from a contract perspective as that top line number would suggest. So, yeah, maybe he gets a warm, fuzzy feeling from having the biggest contract kind of ever. But then does that ultimately hang over his head to some extent? Are people just thinking of him as the $700 million man? And then if things don't go so great during the next decade for him, then there's even more invective hurled his way because he seemingly just completely broke the salary scale? I suspect the answer to that question is no, but that's going to be my kind of wishy-washy way of engaging with this. So, like, the $700 million number is going to stick in people's mind. But I think that particularly given the unprecedented and pretty shocking nature of the deferrals here, I think that if ever there was a time where the news that it's not really $700

million is going to travel, it's now, right? People are going to hear about this. And I think that Otani, without it being sort of a silly or self-aggrandizing thing to say, will be able to say, like, I did this structure so that I could help facilitate the team spending on other players and going and getting other guys who can help us bring, you know, World Series baseball, championship baseball to Dodger Stadium. Now, we do have to, like, sit with the little wrinkle that clearly it being the biggest number was important to him because again he wouldn't have structured it this way if he didn't want that

top line number out there so that like is a kind of interesting bit of insight into his personality but i think that you know if people give him guff, first of all, his representation is going to be able to point to like the true financial impact of this to the Dodgers right now. And they're going to be able to point to the fact that the best player in baseball is only drawing a $2 million a year salary, and he's doing it so that his team can be the best team possible. And I feel like that's a pretty compelling defense against the idea that, you know, he's not going to be worth it because like the deferral stuff, like that's funny money, you know, and that's funny money. That's not anybody who cares about

the Dodgers today's problem. That's like the problem of the, you know, scions of like Guggenheim investments, you know, the, the progenygenheim investments, you know, the progeny of those fund managers, like, and who cares about them, right? Like, I mean, I'm sure their parents do, but like, we don't have to care about them. We don't know those folks. So like, this isn't a present Dodger fan problem. And it's not really even future Dodgers fans problems, because it's spread out over so many years. It's not going to matter. And we know that this money is not going to be worth as much in future dollars as it is worth in today's dollars. So like even if you assume a pretty modest inflation rate. So I don't know. I think

that like he might be able to wiggle his way out of any of those accusations. And the only reason that they would exist in the first place is if the next 10 years go badly. And the nice thing about 10-year contracts is, first of all, this one includes Otani, who's the best player in baseball. And like 10 years is a lot of time. You're going to miss him on the mound for the first one. Are there scenarios in which like they managed to sort of unfortunately steer into like extreme downside scenarios with him? Yes, those exist, right? Like, he could, his internal brace, which is what we think he had, right, the revision to his Tommy John, which is, like, a really funny way to talk about a, like, medical procedure. Like,

is there a comma stuck in there that you forgot to pull out? But he could suffer further injury. The injury he has could, you know, not go well from a rehab perspective. And maybe he does end up as a DH only or a hitter only. Although if, you know, he truly gets to a point where he's unable to pitch, I have to imagine that they explore redeploying him in the field and having him just play right. I don't find those to be the most likely scenarios. And I think the Dodgers must agree because whether you quote the top line number or $460 million, which is a lot of money, that's a lot of money. You know, they were clearly comfortable with the balance of risk to reward here to give him a very lucrative contract,

even if they are able to delay the pain of it until I am, I have to say again, approaching my 60th birthday, Ben. I just, it's not quite 60. I'm going to be shy by a few years, but it'll be closer to that than it is to 50. Have I told you that my mom says rounding up to 40 now that I'm 37? She's like, you're rounding up to 40. And I was like, you do not get to charge me for that time. I have not lived those years yet. We don't know what they're going to do to me. So anyway, all of that to say, I think it will probably be fine. I do think that there will be people who are like, so Shohei, like, what's it? What is this?

Like, what is this that you're doing here? This is so weird. And they might draw conclusions about his personhood that aren't flattering. But also, like like people are just going to be doing that with this guy no matter what, because he's so invested in being private that like, you know, people are just going to decide what they think about him, I think. Yeah, by deferring so much, he does potentially stand to save on expensive California state income tax if he no longer lives in the state when he gets those big payouts. I've seen some people suggest maybe he could just convert all of that into equity after

he retires. He could become a part owner of the Dodgers. But the LA Times said there's no option for the deferred money to be converted into an ownership stake in the future. It's hard to say what he would splurge on, even if he were making the full amount now. And he's been making plenty and he will be making plenty. making the full amount now. And, you know, he's been making plenty and he will be making plenty. But if the public perception of him is accurate and if how he portrays himself is accurate, then he's just kind of going from the ballpark to home to the gym back and forth again.

Right. What is he going to be spending this money on? I don't know. Better gym, better home, I guess. Sure. More dogs. Who knows? But if his consumption is not that conspicuous, then all the more reason to defer some of it and make do on your meager endorsement money plus two million in the short term and then cash out later,

which Zach Graham, my pal at The Ringer, was saying to me the other day, will we get kind of a Bobby Bonilla day equivalent for Otani when his payouts come? But now it's like not as many years and also it's 68 million. So Zach was saying like, hey, it could be Shohei Otani Day and, you know, we could just celebrate his career and reminisce about how great his tenure in L.A. was and we can still do all those things. But I don't know if people will have the same sense of

it as a fun quirky thing when he's getting a 68 million a year payout. Maybe that's a little bit different from Bobby Bo getting a mere one or so one plus something decades after he retired. It's a little bit different. This is another argument, I suppose, for him not getting tagged with the 700 million dollar thing quite as often, because we're going to talk about these deferrals every year. Zach is right. And I think because of the size, we're really going to really talk about them. I get texts about Bobby Bonilla Day from people who don't care about baseball. Can you imagine the text that I'm going to get about Otani?

There will come a time when he is just not an active player anymore. He'll be a retired player long before the Dodgers are done paying him for his services as a player. But there will come a time where he's just not playing anymore. ownership group maybe he gets really into wine maybe he starts collecting art maybe he's like a rare book guy maybe he he'll just hang out with his dog like i guess by the time he's done playing i mean i hate to break this to everyone it'll probably not be that same dog but it could be i mean we don't know we don't know anything about that dog we don't know how old it is we don't know how its genes were spliced i maintain that there's something wrong with that dog. You know, this is my new I'm not a truther type, but maybe I'm going to be a Notani dog truther. Not about the name. I don't really

care about that, but there's something wrong with that dog. That dog's too perfect. That's not a normal dog. This is taking a dark turn. Everyone just wants to know the dog's name, and you want to know the dog's life expectancy. And I'm like, that dog is going to live forever or not, as the case may be. observations stipulating that it's not quite as much money as $700 million makes it sound.

It's still a lot of money. And it happened during a week when Juan Soto went to the Yankees from the Padres. And so I saw some people saying, uh-oh, this is the scenario that we were worried about when the cable bubble started popping, when ballys started collapsing and reneging. Is this what we're going to see? Because we've talked about that in the past. The potential, the downside is it's going to lead to haves and have-nots, right? If you're in a market where your broadcast deal is not so solid or you don't have as big a media market, then you might not be able to spend as much comfortably as teams in other markets that have that sort

of settled. And obviously, there's always been a bit of a disparity in resources. But if you have, say, the Yankees and the Dodgers, for instance, who either own their own regional sports network or have a long-term lucrative deal with one that is on more solid footing relative to, say, the Padres, who are trading away Juan Soto to try to trim payroll. Is this a vision of the future? Is this what we're going to see? It's just going to be the Dodgers and the Yankees collecting all the expensive players even more than they always have while the other teams struggle to try to keep up. I think that the only potential answer,

the only realistic answer to that question is, I don't know. I don't know that I look at this particular situation and think that it is a sign of what a fully settled TV landscape is going to look like when all of the RSN stuff finally kind of comes to a head and then gets worked out. My base assumption, based on the reporting we have seen around the popularity of baseball in local markets, even in markets where the team is not good, is that broadcasting baseball games is still popular, right? There's still a lot of consumer appetite for baseball. And so is it going to take time to figure out how to monetize that away from an RSN model? Yeah, it might. Is the ultimate monetization that we do get going to equal what we got from the cable bundle? I don't know. You know, I think that it's probably going to be much more variable than it was when, you know, you could just count on a basic cable subscription helping to subsidize your payroll. I think that when we look at the Bally stuff, like it is important to remember that a lot of

what went wrong with Bally is how they decided to structure their acquisition there, right? They were so heavily overleveraged, like so much of the money they put up was borrowed that, you know, it's got its own sort of dynamic to it. I don't know how different it will ultimately end up being. I know that Major League Baseball and its owners are highly incentivized to figure out ways to make money. So like they're going to figure out as many ways to make money as possible. That might mean that like there are clubs that are making less because the product they have to put on the field is less compelling. But I'm skeptical that those teams were like really in the hunt for an Otani anyway. Like they wouldn't have been in the hunt for an Otani three years ago when their RSN picture was like much clearer,

right? And their long-term budget looked stable, even if ultimately it didn't prove to be. So I just don't know what it's gonna mean. Do you think Cleveland would have been playing in this space even without like RSN weirdness? I think that what's going on with Seattle is concerning because that's a team that in theory should be positioned to do well, right? It's in a city that has a lot of money. There's a lot of interest in the team. They've had stable gate. They've had good gate over the last two years, right? And they're still in this place where they feel it's necessary to retrench.

Obviously, what's going on with San Diego isn't great because you never want to be in a position where you like have to deal a Juan Soto. But even there, we're talking about a team that's probably looking to have a payroll around $200 million. So it's not like they're going full guardians or anything like that, right? So I just think it's unsettled. And I don't want to be naive and think that like, it's gonna be, you know, what it was when the folks who don't

care about baseball were supplementing, you know, the carriage fees that RSNs were getting. Probably not. But there's a lot of money to be made in streaming because people do like to watch sports and they do want to pay for it. And so I don't know. I feel like they're probably going to figure something out, even if it brings like the net revenue across the league down a little bit. Like, I think ultimately it'll be fine. And the good news for baseball fans is that like, they have the technological infrastructure sitting in MLB to like make all this stuff work. And I'm not saying that's the hard part. Like I think figuring out the business model is probably its own challenge, obviously. But like the San Diego Valley, like stop being able to carry games one day. And then the very

next day, like you could watch Padres baseball and that technological transition being so seamless even though I'm sure it was a ton of work on the back end is like wildly impressive to me like the fact that that is sort of in place and they know how to do it now you know like they have some experience after what they dealt with San Diego and Arizona so that's a long way of saying, I don't know. I think it'll probably be fine. Ultimately, will it be quite as robust as this? Maybe not. But, you know, maybe that'll lead to teams reorienting themselves toward a more competitive product on the field. Because if you have to make the direct-to-consumer case that you should sign up for $9 a month or $10 a month or $20 a month so that you can watch your Seattle Mariners. You got to put a good product on the field.

Seattle has decided that that's a little less necessary this year. So maybe I'm a Rube. Maybe this is Pollyannish on my part, but the optimistic part of me is like, hey, I guess you got to put a good baseball team on the field so that people want to watch your stupid games. And the last thing is, when will the Dodgers ever be bad? Will they be bad at some point? Will they be bad someday? Someday, if human civilization exists and survives and we continue to play Major League Baseball, every team will be bad at some point. But when? When will they be bad? I wrote years and years and years ago for Grantland, March of 2015, I wrote an article like, when will the Dodgers ever be bad? How can that happen? And I tried to run through some scenarios like, here's how everything could

go wrong in a way that would lead to the Dodgers being bad. Hasn't happened. They've been good ever since. They have made the playoffs every single year of Otani's professional career. And I'm including back since he debuted as a teenager in NPB. And it's just hard to see how this train doesn't keep rolling with the resources they have, with the broadcast deal they're set up with, with the stars that they have currently, with the farm system, which is ranked sixth by Fangraphs, even after all the years of not having high draft picks and sometimes trading prospects, they just managed to keep this thing going and their stars are not super

old. So it's just it's hard to imagine how they're going to be bad. Even if they had really lousy luck, like the Padres had this past year, they have been good enough. They've had a big enough buffer that they could be 10 games worse than they're supposed to be. And they'd still win that division.

They won the NLS by 16 games this year, right? And it wasn't even the best Dodgers team we've seen. So I just don't know. Like, is anyone going to push them? The Padres are still good, still competitive, but maybe now having some spending issues, they traded Juan Soto. The Diamondbacks are up and comers, certainly, but they just finished way behind the Dodgers and they're probably not going to make as huge a splash as the Dodgers just did. The Rockies exist. And, you know, I just like, who's going to stop them?

The Giants? The Giants keep striking out when it comes to signing superstars, as they did here. And they're just kind of a mediocre roster right now, right? So it's just really hard to see how this Dodgers hegemony ends. I'm going to answer your question. But before I do, I went back and watched Preller's press conference after the Soto trade because I, you know, I was in the air when it happened and I was just kind of curious, like how he was positioning it and how he was talking about

the team and how competitive he thought they were going to be this year. You know, it's like you never want to read too much into the tea leaves, but it is instructive sometimes how the GMs talk about their own clubs and how sort of despondent they sound and like preller seemed like he knew that this sucked but still thinks that they're going to be able to field a competitive team and he was asked about their position in the nl west and he did not even name the rockies like he acknowledged how competitive a division it is right and he was talking about the dodgers he's talking about the giants he was talking about the Dodgers. He's talking about the Giants. He's talking about the Diamondbacks. And he didn't even say anything about the Rockies. And it made me laugh. I did the same thing in my write-up for

The Ringer. I mentioned the other three teams. I forgot to mention the Rockies. And my editor left a note to be like, should we mention the Rockies? And then I just wrote in, the Rockies also exists. So that made me laugh and I thought it was funny. But to answer your question, I mean, I guess it depends on like what time horizon you are interested in, because we've seen the Dodgers be bad like a month ago. Right. And I think that are they going to be a club that ever, not ever, but like, are they likely in the next, call it 10 years, over the time horizon of Otani's deal, be a team that just like sinks and is, you know, winning less than 70 games, right? Really bad stuff. I find that quite unlikely, just given, as you said, like, the quality of the roster as it stands, the quality of the farm system, their commitment to patching holes when stuff happens. Like I find it unlikely, but are they capable of having most of their rotation go down simultaneously and being good over the course of an entire season, but not being able to get it done in the postseason? That they're quite capable of.

I don't doubt their ability to get swept in the postseason or lose quickly. No. And, you know, I think that you always have to allow for the extreme sort of downside scenario when it comes to injuries. You know, we saw a version of that in the postseason, but could they, I feel bad even speaking this out loud, because if it happens, someone's going to be like, Meg, you're too powerful of a witch but like you know could otani tear something could bets get you know knocked out for the season because of a hard slide as he tries to turn a double play because guess what he's an infielder now could freddie freeman tweak his back could their infield defense be just like disastrously bad because they're depending on Gavin Lux at short and Max Muncy to be an everyday third baseman? Yeah, that could happen. They could have more guys blow out and need Tommy John and then have a disastrously thin rotation sure like there was a situation where every bad injury happened simultaneously and the Dodgers finish in fourth place in the NL West that could happen but I think if it if it

would take something like that for me to be like yeah this is just not their year and that would be the way I'd frame it too I'd be like you know sometimes you just can't overcome bad luck but they have so many different avenues to put a competitive team on the field. They spend, they're willing to trade strategically. They're really good at developing players. Those players can either reinforce a big league roster or be sent in trade to another team so that they can bring back big league ready contributors. Like, I think they're just, they're really good. Are they the only good team in baseball? No, and they're not even the only good team in their division. But I think in terms of the club that I'm willing to commitment to spending money, like the Mets

or the Rangers or a team that's really good at drafting and development like the Rays, because you just, if you're good at everything and you're willing to deploy everything as a resource, that's pretty potent. So. Yeah. You've forced us to contemplate Otani's dog dying, Otani's and Mookie's career ending disastrously or just like for a season you know like um there's like a really hard takeout slide and suddenly he's just done for the year and you know like i don't want people to think we always agree on everything so maybe i have to be contrarian for the sake of it but like i think that's the downside scenario where it's just like catastrophic injury cascading on catastrophic injury. And all of a sudden you're like, well,

but again, we would talk about it. Like, I guess it's just not their year. You know, it wouldn't be viewed as like an organizational failing. It would just, it would have to be like act of God stuff, I think. So. Yeah. The interesting thing is that they don't typically splurge so much on the free agent market. They have made major moves, obviously, and they've made big extensions. But often they put themselves in a situation where they don't have to sign the hugest deal because they just have so much internal talent that they've promoted or developed. So, yeah, it's a self-sustaining process. It seems to be there's no such thing as a perpetual motion machine or a perpetual playoff team, but they're kind of the closest thing.

I mean, they're the Yankees, too, but the Yankees have at least been mediocre, whereas the Dodgers have just been really good for quite a while. So I have one more thought, which is that when we were talking about Friday and all of the Twitter nonsense and just glorying and how nonsensical, but also how fun it was. I think the thing that made it fun for me, and maybe this was implicit in our conversation, but I don't know if I spelled it out, is that I think most people were pretty in on the joke as it was going on. Like, I know that Blue Jays fans got their hopes up. They were not in on the joke. They were. By the end, yeah, they were obviously crestfallen. And I think, though, that as it was going on, you know, people were taking the opera singer tweet and the flight tracker information, for the most part, that I saw, at least, with

an appropriate grain of salt. And like, we know this is silly. We're trusting an opera singer's tweet about Kikuchi making a reservation for sushi and we're inferring things from that. I think it was just inherently so silly that everyone understood that it was silly and was kind of having fun with it.

Now later when there was more and more smoke and reports and credible people saying, yes, he's actually on the way to Toronto. Then I think it got more serious and people were more disappointed. And that's led to lots of hand-wringing from the baseball media, yeah, there were some conspiracy theorists and there certainly have been after everything went down. But during it, like in the early hours, at least, what made it so enjoyable for me is that everyone, I think, was fully aware of like, OK, we're kind of out on a limb here, but it could be. And this is fun. And let's just believe it were true because this would be a better story. I think I agree.

I do think that maybe the shift to it being like a legitimate sort of failure of reporting happened earlier for me than it may be for you. I do feel bad for Blue Jays fans. I think they got their hopes legitimately raised in a way that proved to be faulty. And maybe some people have been a little more forthright in their apologies on that score than others. But yeah, when it was still in like flight tracker opera singer territory, I thought it was it was a good fun time. It invites us to consider the real sort of merit and value of that kind of scoop tracking aspect to free agency. You know, I've had a lot of conversations over the last couple of days about like, how do you appropriately apologize for and walk something like that back? How do you accept sort of responsibility for mistakes in reporting? How should you talk about that? How much of the biodome should be involved in reporting? How should you talk about that? How much of the biodome should be involved in that? And I think that we would all probably be pretty well served

to just put less store in this stuff until it's really, really done. We talked previously about, you know, sort of how thankful we are that in general, like the highest profile scoops folks in baseball, you know, the thing that I know them for and sort of think of first when I think of, you know, a Passon or a Rosenthal is, isn't, I was first on X signing. Like after 20 minutes, I don't remember who the hell is first on any of this stuff, you know, they, and in general, they all get the news within a couple minutes of each other, right? The difference between being first and fifth on a signing like this can be sometimes a matter of seconds, you know? I don't mean to say that they don't take pride in the reporting that they're doing there and that there isn't work being done. Right. Like, I think that the best newsbreakers cultivate relationships pretty carefully and it comes to serve them well in moments like this. But yeah, what a silly thing, you know, because ultimately, like, Otani just told us, you know, he just told us.

And then his agent was just like, here's how much the deal is. just told us and then his agent was just like here's how much the deal is right i don't want to say we should take it less seriously because friday did illustrate like how important reporting is because it's it can go wrong right it can be gotten wrong but i also think that like when the dodgers get otani like they are gonna tell us at some point here. They just had to move like a Vivas and a Gonzalez to clear the 40-man space for it. But I don't know, man. What a weird thing. Not a Vivas, but a Vivaldi, as I believe Bob Nightingale treated him. Oh, my God.

I know. It was like, I hope that this comes through with like appropriate sort of silliness and affection. That was a funny mistake. Yes. Like 24 hours after a very intense, detailed, here's how we must get things right. And it's like, Vivaldi, is that it? It also makes me wonder how often Bob talks about Vivaldi. Yeah, right. Like, is that an autocorrect as a result of usage? Is he a classical music head? Yeah. And speaking of fun first names, Yorbit with a B and it starts with a J. So it looks like

Jorbit, but probably isn't. That is a baseball name I enjoyed getting to know. Yeah. Reporters can get played and they can get over eager and we don't need to fill a news void with just something, anything. It can be quiet for a while. That is okay. I actually think it's sort of sweet when all the newsbreakers credit each other. I couldn't care less either, but it's professional courtesy. I try to cite my sources and give credit and link to other people's work.

Compared to Woj and Shams not acknowledging each other's existence, it seems pretty polite. I know Craig Calcaterra has a theory that this arose as a gatekeeping tactic back when there were wars between the bloggers and the newspaper people and that the BBWA people were crediting each other to distinguish themselves from the internet folk. Could be, but hey, they're all in the news breaking business. The scoops affect their professional prospects. It has some stakes for them. Also, you were talking last time about how odd it is that people know where celebrities live and can take tours to see their houses.

It's also kind of weird that we can track flights. Like, I'm happy that we can do it. I'm not aligning myself with Elon here who wants to strike that information for the record. I think it's a public good for the most part. And I think it's partly because like taxpayers pay for FAA and maintenance and everything. And so, you know, we're entitled to that information. And also, I think there are ways that you can remove yourself from those databases if you submit a certain request. But I think that's true. It's an odd thing that we can track the progress of a flight, even if we can't track exactly who is in it, although you can determine that sometimes. Not this time.

Well, not before it landed, anyhow. Not before it landed, exactly. All right. Do you have any thoughts about Tyler O'Neill being traded from the Cardinals to the Red Sox for a couple of pitchers? I think that he is a big brawny boy. I think that everyone should know that he plays the piano, and I think quite well. I recollect that correctly from his Mariners prospect days. I will be interested to track an aspect of this trade that isn't really,

I think the return that they got for O'Neal is, you know, sort of appropriate and proportional. I don't think there's anything lopsided about this trade, unlike the top of O'Neal's body to the bottom, because like that's kind of crazy. But St. Louis has in the recent past kind of picked the wrong guys to trade from their outfield. I bet they want the Randy trade back, you know, like they sold low on a Rosarena. They didn't have him scouted right. And I don't know that O'Neal really falls into that category because he has issues in his swing that are separate and distinct from the injury concerns. Although I do think the injury concerns, as Bauman noted in his transaction analysis, certainly cloud like how much of this is a true skill issue versus him

being hurt but you know i'll just be curious to see kind of what we think of this in a couple of months or years because sometimes st louis has kind of picked the wrong guys they've sort of moved the wrong dudes so there's that it sounds like i think we talked about marmal's reaction to o'neill at the time like It also just strikes me as a good change of scenery trade, not only for him, but for the organization. There seems to be a disconnect between him and the leadership of that team. And so it's probably better that he kind of be able to attempt a rebound with another club. I like the fit in theory for the Red Sox because they probably needed another

outfielder in that mix, especially after the Radugo trade. And, you know, when O'Neal is able to connect, boy, can he really put a charge into the baseball. So just let him grip it and rip it. Yeah. And, you know, he has gripped it and ripped it. And sometimes that means he strikes out like a shocking amount of the time. Sometimes it means it rips some part of his body potentially. Right. You know, and like I am not a doctor. So that's one thing I'm not. And I'm not a hitting coach. So that's another thing we can add to the list of things Meg isn't, along with PhD, because that didn't end up going all the way through.

But, you know, when you have guys like that, they are so strong, like they can just kind of rip themselves. And so I'll be curious to see as he's coming back from another season where he had some issues, like is two seasons with St. Louis when he was running a strikeout rate, you know, in limited action. Mind you, it was like 60 games each. But like his first year up with St. Louis, he had like a 40% strikeout rate. He also had a 116 WRC+. So, you know, you can kind of get there a lot of different ways. And he certainly brought the number down as his big league career has gone on. But I think it's a perfectly fine little move. It seemed like it was likely to happen given that they do have depth at that position. down as his big league career has gone on but i think it's a perfectly fine little move it seemed

like it was likely to happen given that they do have depth at that position and want to acquire more pitching and wish him well you know he's from um just up the road from seattle and he was someone who i thought would be a reasonable but strikeout prone hitter and that's kind of what he's turned out to be and you know they still have like obviously they will hope for a full healthy season from newt bar and they will hope that jordan walker won't be like literally the worst fielder in baseball and that seems it seems like it has to improve but they kicked tommy edmund out to the outfield because they had all these infielders and they

still have a number of outfielders. So I don't know. I think it'll be fine. I always enjoy players who are much speedier than they seem like they should be based on their build. And also, I think that the Cardinals have had too many players, specifically too many outfielders, which sounds like it's a good thing and generally is to have a lot of talented players. But at some point it becomes a problem when they're all competing for playing time and it's hard to evaluate them in part-time roles. So yeah, it seemed like this was a change of scenery that had to happen. Last thing, we're soliciting amicus briefs from our listeners. We need your help to resolve a debate that we will conduct on our next episode about how to handle Shohei Otani's contract in

the free agent contracts over underdraft. Meg took the under on MLB Trade Rumor's prediction of $528 million. The total guaranteed dollar value, which we've traditionally gone by, was well above that, but the present value was well below. So please write in and let us know which way we should go. The outcome of the draft hangs in the balance. And now let's get to our guest. We get a lot of questions about baseball broadcasts and how could they be better and what's the future of baseball broadcasts and can't think of anyone better to talk to than John DiMarsco, who is the SNY game director. And you are almost certainly familiar with his

work because a lot of it has gone viral, even for non-Mets fans. If you're familiar with the Timmy Trumpet, Edwin Diaz entrance where the cameras followed him all the way in, that was SNY. If you've seen some of the split screen pitch clock countdowns, that was SNY. If you've seen the red Kill Bill tinted filter on Buck Showalter when Mets batters would get plunked, that was SNY. on Buck Showalter when Mets batters would get plunked. That was SNY. And if you've seen the quote-unquote ghost runner, and I'm okay with this usage of ghost runner, in July, John tried something where he superimposed a runner on the picture of the fielder going after a ball in the outfield so that you could see both of those things happening at once, that was SNY as well. And we talked about that back on episode 2033. And then immediately after that, there was a play on a Rangers-Rays broadcast

where the camera followed the entire play. It was a Margot double into right field and Garcia picked it up and Josh Lowe was running around and it just zoomed out to capture the whole sweep of the play and you could see where everyone was and it was wonderful. And we talked about that in episode 2035 and Sam wrote about it on his sub stack. So we get into that as well with John. And he's also a big film guy. He's a cinephile. He loves movies and he's trying to bring some of that sensibility to baseball broadcasts. So really interesting guy pushing baseball broadcasts forward. So I'm going to play him in here with the audio from a clip that he tweeted of his Ghostrunner play, but of the control room behind the scenes as that was happening. So you can see all the cameras. I'll link to this too, all the shots in the screens, and you can hear him counting out which cameras to cut to and get some sense of how complex that job actually is.

He's going to hit a green light right here. Two. Goodbye. Nope. Ready Ghostrunner. Ghostrunner. Lose it. 34. Take four. Ready for one. Take one. Eight.

From the pitch, just a few. 36, 66. Wide first. Actually passed the hit on 6. 6. 6. 6. 6. Wide first. 8. Actually passed the hit on 8. 3. 7. Take 7.

Take the relay. 3. 6. All right. Red. Take 6. Ready to wipe red. Swing.

And wipe red. Go. That looked that well. 3 is all back. Roll leg is all back. That was a shot. Stay for this. What was the exit velocity, Mikey?

Stand by B. Ready for the relay. That is a shot. What was the exit velocity, Mikey? Stand by B. Get a relay. Ready out the four. We are joined now by John D'Amarsco. He is the Mets director for SNY TV. John, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. We've wanted to have you for a while, so we're happy that you're here. And for those who are not familiar

with your career, can you tell people a little bit about how a film head came to be running baseball broadcasts and how you translated that love of film to sports? Sure. Where do I start? Well, you know, I came into this role. No, I went to film school at North Carolina State. So I studied film for four years and I thought I really I really thought I was going to be in that industry. Unfortunately, unfortunately, I grew up a diehard Mets fan. And so I was looking for an internship going into my last semester at school. And I thought that I would give SNY a try. So I applied to SNY. Long story short, I got the internship, fell in love with it, and was fortunate enough to do that internship under the tutelage of the greatest director who's ever lived. His name is Bill Webb. He started doing Fox baseball when they got the baseball package, and he did 20-plus World Series, 20-plus All-Star Games, and more or less was the first like rock star director. A lot of his techniques are the stuff that I implement day to day.

And he kind of took me under his wing from that internship up until his unfortunate passing back in 2017. It's sort of been a natural transition for me from being a film geek and cinephile and sort of bringing some of those techniques into how we do baseball. Because we had that creative foundation to start with Bill and our producer, Greg Picker. They're some of the most creative people that, you know, are in this business. And so it was very natural for me to sort of bring this foundational knowledge of film and production within that industry and try to sneak in a few

elements when it comes to broadcasting a baseball game. And I'm curious what the sort of initial reaction to that was from SNY, from the broadcast booth, from your colleagues, because you had such a strong foundation. The reputation of that booth in particular is so strong, even among folks who don't particularly care about the Mets. I think a lot of people will click over to SNY just to hear that trio. So how did it start for you in terms of actually incorporating some of these film concepts and homages into the broadcast? And were you nervous the first time to say, I'm going to, you know, here's my Tarantino moment or whatever. Let's see if anybody notices. Well, see, the way this kind of works is, you know,

when you get this job. So when I started at SMY, so I interned in 2009 and I got hired in 2010. You start out doing graphics. That's like the entry level position in the truck. There's four positions. That's the entry level. And, you know, once I got my feet wet there, you do the X's and O's and make sure you have the better graphics ready. But you can start getting creative. And, you know, I start taking I started taking chances then, whether it be, you know, you know, putting a cool sound effect on a graphic or, you know, the little stuff. or, you know, the little stuff. One of the more popular things that we do on our broadcast when it comes to the graphics is anytime Keith Hernandez brings up Lou Brock,

because he brings them up, you know, once every two days, we have a graphic that we play that, you know, has Lou Brock flying to the screen with a chorus singing Lou Brock. And I can't remember if that was me or the guy that came after me, but it's stuff like that. You're able to, you know,

kind of get your feet wet in the beginning. And I, and I took that to every position that I've done when I got the directing job after the 2019 season, it sort of just felt natural to, you know, keep taking chances and, um, you know, try to flex that creative muscles, you know, as much as the game allows me. Um, and that honestly, and, and you brought up Gary, Keith and Ron, because those guys are so good, we're able to take the chances that we do because it's not going to throw them off. We don't have a lot of production meetings. We don't have a lot of pre-planned stuff going into a game every single night. We really want to get organic reactions from those guys, whether it's a graphic or a piece of video or something

interesting that we're going to do with a soundbite or whatever it may be. We want an organic reaction. So a lot of broadcasts will preview all of your elements that you're going to use for that night. We do that a little bit, but we really like to keep it fresh because we know that those guys can handle it. Gary's going to be able to take something totally off the wall and mold it into the mesh of the broadcast seamlessly. So a lot of the things that I do and we do as a group doesn't really work without those guys because we have that continuity

and that long relationship with each other. It's kind of like Ronnie said this before. It's sort of like freeform jazz every night. I'll have my moment where I do a solo. Then our producer will have his moment where he does a solo. Then Gelb comes in and does his moment. And then over the course of a three-hour baseball game or two and a half now with the pitch clock, it becomes a show more than just a baseball game.

I think we have a similar philosophy here at Effectively Wild, not to compare ourselves to Gary Keith and Ron, but we've been doing this show forever. We'll do it live, except in our case, it's not actually live. So we can fix it if we screw up. Did you at any point get any pushback, any, okay, Scorsese, knock it off, stick to sports. People just want to see who's batting. Oh yeah, absolutely. And that stuff's going to happen. But you know what? We try to do a little something for everybody over the course of a game. There's an easy way to do baseball. There's a by-the-book way to do baseball. And you're going can flex a little bit of their muscle. And you're going to get a few people here or there. And honestly, though, I've been kind of shocked that in the world where Twitter or X is sort of a cesspool of terrible takes

and a lot of venom, I really haven't gotten a lot of it. It's been really nice to, first of all, be able to take the chances that I'm taking. And second of all, sort of be embraced by most people that are online. Obviously, that's a small percentage of our viewing audience. And so you have to keep that in mind as well. But I've been thrilled with the reaction that we've gotten. And, you know, it's taken a little bit of time for the people wearing suits to the office every day for them to come

around to some of the stuff. And I give them a lot of credit too. In 2022, when I did the, when I turned Buck's face red and did my little Kill Bill Tarantino reference, you know, I had somebody come to me at SMY and go, I got to tell you, when I saw that, I really hated it. But then I got a text from my son in college saying that was the coolest thing that he's ever seen on a baseball broadcast. So maybe I don't know everything. So it's you know, it's it's that kind of working atmosphere. And also having the reception that I've gotten from the fans, it's it's made it easy. And it's you know, it's making it made it exciting to go to the ballpark every day and, you know, to kind of see what might come next. Our Patreon supporters were excited to hear that we were having you on.

And I asked for some questions and I'll try to work a few of these in here. There was one from Brontosaurus who said, how do they test new techniques or approaches, transitions, cuts, camera choices, the superimposed ghost runner outside of a live broadcast? How do you do that when you're not actually in a game setting? Is there spring training for the SNY broadcast as well? Yeah, absolutely. We do. We usually do like 15 spring training games every year. That's not necessarily a training ground for those sort of new techniques.

That's more about getting your rhythm and timing back, just like for the hitters and pitchers. It's getting some reps before the season starts because baseball is all about timing and rhythm. I have to give credit for all that, you know, as far as creation and implementation to our crew back at home in New York. We have a technical director who, his name is Seth Sweeble. He's the guy that sits beside me in the truck and physically presses the buttons and levers when I call out the shots. He is one of the more creative people that I've ever met in my life. I'll come to him with an idea, and he's able to do things with that switcher, that piece of equipment that he uses, that blow my mind.

I came to him three or four years ago with this split diopter, split screen effect that I sort of, it's become part of my normal repertoire of things. And it's sort of, it's evolved over time, but he was able to, you know, come up with this technique in like a matter of minutes. And no matter how crazy the idea is, he's not able to do everything. No matter how crazy the idea is, I can bring it to him when I get to the ballpark on, let's say a Monday, he may have it ready for that game that night, if not the next day. It depends on how complex it is. You know, back in 2022, we had this, I did this thing where, you know, I walked Edwin Diaz in from the bullpen and it had an eight split screen box effect that eventually went full to one camera. So that was a complex one, but it's amazing how quick he did. So I

actually got the idea from the movie Elvis, Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. And I literally took a picture of my TV screen. I labeled the eight boxes that they used with the cameras that I want in those boxes. I texted it to Seth that night. And by the time I got to the truck the next day, it was like three quarters of the way done. And he had it done by the game that night. And it just so happened that Diaz came in that night and we used it. And so it's a collaborative process. I mean, you have to have the talent in all the positions, whether it's camera, video, audio, technical director, graphics, whoever it may be, You have to be surrounded by really talented people. And that really motivates me to keep going and thinking of

new ways to look at things and new ways to keep the game fresh. You mentioned the pitch clock earlier, and I was curious what impact that had on, I mean, I'm sure just your typical process, but also the appetite that the network might have to try new things, you know, if they have fewer broadcast minutes. Does that alter the dynamic for you at all? Absolutely. Going into last season, I was very concerned about the pitch clock because, you know, I go to all these meetings at Major League Baseball and, you know, everyone's bragging, this is going to cut 30 minutes off the game. And all the other networks are cheering and they're thrilled and they're happy going to cut 30 minutes off the game. And all the other networks are cheering and they're thrilled and they're happy. Oh, 30 minutes off the game.

It's going to be incredible. I was really nervous because those 30 minutes are kind of where SMY shines, whether it's the booth doing their thing, Gelb's doing his thing, or us doing our stuff in the truck. And I was concerned that some of that was going to go away. And it was definitely a transitional period. Like it was a little tough in the beginning. That first month, it took a little while to get the rhythm of the new game back.

As we have always done is we've sort of evolved. And by the time August and September came around, I rarely thought of the clock. It just became part of what we did. And it didn't really mess with my timing much. Here's where it did have an impact is so we have a certain number of sales elements that we have to get in every game, whether it's a sponsorship or a sponsored graphic or, you know, a Mets promo, a giveaway, whatever it may be. We

have a certain amount we have to do every single game. So that total number of items did not go down, but the amount of time that we have to get that stuff in did go down. So that's sort of where we feel the impact creatively because we have to sort of balance what we do with the sales stuff while also the booth elements. And it was a transition for the announcers too. There was a point a month into the season where Ronnie and Keith were like, I feel like I'm not saying anything over the course of these games because it's moving so quickly. I mean, Gary has to do his play by play

and do his thing. And they really have to pick their spots. And when they say something, they have to really make sure that they're saying something. You know, they can't just chatter as much as they used to. You know, they have to really think about

what they say because that window to get it in is much smaller. As conversational as it sounds, and it is conversational, you have to be a little bit more strategic with your words. Pre-pitch clock, especially, people thought of baseball as a leisurely sport. You just relax, and there's lots of downtime. But it's not like that for you. It's like you're at mission control at NASA or something. You've just got a number of screens screens and you're constantly just shouting out, ready, camera two and go to camera three and just making decisions every second.

It looks so stressful. It looks so hectic. I mean, how many cuts are you calling out per inning or over the course of a game? That's a great question. I honestly, I don't know. You know, that sounds like a great intern project next year. Honestly, I don't know. You know, that sounds like a great intern project next year. How many times do I say the word take over the course of a game? I don't know. In some games, obviously, there's more than others. Yeah, one of my favorite things to do is to bring visitors into the truck so they can kind of see, you know, how the sausage is made. And that's sort of why I posted those videos last year, because people, you know, anytime I bring a guest or somebody has a guest in the truck, they're just kind of blown away by how this is made, you know, because when you're watching the game at home, you're sort of letting

the images roll over you. And, you know, if the broadcast team is doing their job, they're sort of invisible. I mean, our broadcast, that's not the goal, but a lot of broadcast it is to be invisible and just show the game. And so you take for granted the amount of work that goes into every single camera cut. You know, somebody had to physically bring that camera from the truck to the camera position, build the camera, run the cable. It's a long process. I mean, when we go into a road city for a seven o'clock game, the truck gets in the night before and starts that process of getting ready for the game. It's a lot of moving pieces. It's a lot of people.

It's a lot of hard work to make that special time from 7 o'clock to 9.30, 10 o'clock every night as special as it is. How does it compare to game directing in other sports? You've done some work in women's basketball during the baseball off season at SNY. I'm just wondering, compared to sports where the whole field or court or rink or whatever it is, is laid out in front of you and the action is moving side to side, right? And you can sort of, from that angle, see everything. Obviously, you have to cut to close-ups and give people different looks, but you can kind of cover more of the field. So I wonder whether baseball is more hectic from a broadcast perspective. Are there more cameras, more perspective shifts? Absolutely. Baseball, for my money, obviously I'm biased, is the most difficult sport to broadcast

live because, like you said, it's one of the only team sports that doesn't go left to right on your television screen. And it's also one of the only sports where a lot of the quote-unquote points or runs are scored away from the ball. So that makes it difficult. You have an obligation as a director or producer, broadcast team, to document the event as best you can. And that's hard to do when there's a ball hitting the gap and you have to let the viewer know that the guy scored a run. And so this kind of gets back into the play that you guys brought up where you kind of see everything. There are a million decisions made every single game. There's obviously the ABCs of baseball.

This is how you're supposed to direct it. But there's a million decisions every game where you have a choice, a split-second decision where you might see something and take a chance to convey what's happening on the field better to the folks at home. But it's difficult. Baseball is tough.

In football and basketball, soccer, hockey, I don't want to disparage, but you could stay on one camera to cover the action, more or less. Baseball, you just can't. And so it's all about timing. It's about knowledge of the game. It's the experience of doing a game every single day, which helps and getting in that rhythm. It's a feel thing. It's a feel thing.

Every single camera in baseball has a different responsibility depending on the situation in the game. A camera in the first base dugout is going to do something different with nobody on base than with a runner on base. A camera on the third base side, when there's two runners on base, is going to do something different than when there's one or two runners or no runners on base. Every camera has a different responsibility. Those assignments are important to the integral way that baseball is broadcast live. We see this on the front office side, where innovations don't tend to stay isolated within the game for very long. It's a copycat league. I know that some of the angles that you have, I don't know if

Pioneered is quite the right way to describe it, but Pioneered have found their way onto other baseball broadcasts. And I wonder how that washes over you. Is it imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Or do you see some of your work other places and go, hey, wait a minute, I know you haven't seen that movie. No, I think it's great when things that we're doing at SMY, you know, pop up in other places. We've always sort of prided ourselves in getting out in front of things and not following ourselves, but doing things first. That's not always the case, obviously. Like you said, it's a copycat league.

But there's really no shot that I can take over the course of a nine inning game, over the course of 162 games that hasn't really been done before. The things that I'm doing, I'm not, you know, pulling them out of a hat and having them doing them for the first time. I really feel like baseball has a long history on television. And there's there's a lot of things that I'm doing that people maybe just haven't seen for a long time. I actually just recently got a text from one of our crew members in Miami that does our

Marlins games. And he sent me a clip from the 1952 World Series. And they were doing a sort of soft to solve split screen with the runner on first base being held. And I go, wait a second. I thought I came up with that. So you're just a hack is what you're saying. Exactly. Exactly. So you're just a hack is what you're saying. Exactly, exactly. So it's, it's, it's, it's, that's just kind of the nature of the beast, the repetition

of, you know, the history of baseball in America is as long as any sport in this country. And the history of it being on television is almost just as long, almost since the advent of television itself. It's really hard to come up with something original that hasn't been done before. You try to mix it up and you try to keep things fresh. And I'm a pretty good judge of how I think the audience is viewing things is if I'm enjoying it or if I think it's interesting, a lot of the times that seems to translate because I grew up a Mets fan. I grew up a baseball fan. I grew up a baseball player. And so that's sort of my gauge for what works and what doesn't a lot of the time. And I wanted to ask on that point, I don't know how

much other baseball you get to watch because, you know, you're pretty busy during the season. But have there been other teams broadcast where they've used a technique or a camera angle or stuck with something where you thought, hey, that's really cool. I want to see if we can incorporate that into the SNY broadcast. To be perfectly honest, the last thing I want to do after working a nine inning game is to go home and watch more baseball. Sure. So, you know, occasionally I'll put on, you know, the West Coast games when I get home and kind of check it and see what Otani's doing and, you know, that whole deal. But a lot of the times I'll just go home and watch a movie. And that's sort of a lot of my inspiration creatively for what I do anyway.

And so my routine sort of is I wake up in the morning and I'll put on MLB Network and they'll kind of get me caught up. I like what those guys do there on their morning show. And so that's a pretty good way to get caught up. But as far as techniques, you had sent me the play from, was it Tampa Bay in Texas? Is that what it was? Lined out to right field. That's a base hit. Keep in mind, Lowe has good speed. He heads to third. They're going to wave him. Here comes a relay throw from Simeon. Looks good. The tag. Got him! They covered the ball being hit into the corner, and they cut to their high third base camera to show the perspective with the relay and the runner in the same frame. So I thought that was really great.

It wasn't necessarily perfect, and there were some risks involved with a play like that. But that's a play where I appreciated the risk they took, because on that kind of play, it really enhanced the experience for the viewer at home. Yeah. So that sort of play, I sent you what Sam Miller wrote about it and we talked about it on the podcast at the time. There are these outdated conventions when it comes to presenting those plays and that it's actually not serving the audience the best in all of these cases because we can't really piece together the play. We're zooming past the infield and past the runner to zoom into the outfielder and then we can't see the outfielder in relation to the runner and you don't know where the ball is in relation to anyone. in relation to the runner and you don't know where the ball is in relation to anyone. There are a lot of plays like this, right, where we're showing a snippet of the play and then we're cutting back and forth instead of pulling back to show the whole thing, the whole sweep of the play. So do you think that that is a relic of, say, back when cameras weren't as high resolution

as they are now and you couldn't see anything on your tiny little CRT standard definition? Or are there reasons that that's happening? Can we do a better job of conveying some of these plays? I mean, I'm stealing things from the 1952 World Series, so apparently I'm the relic. But no, there's a book on how to direct baseball. There literally is a book on how to direct baseball. There's the ABCs of baseball. And there is a right and wrong way to do things. I don't necessarily agree with all those things. And I feel like people should be taking more chances when it comes to especially that kind of play. The play that gives directors the biggest headache and is their biggest the biggest quandary for them on a nightly basis is trying to show the runner scoring, but not missing the relay throw

in from the outfield. So it's like I said before, baseball is difficult because it doesn't go left or right on your, on your television screens, you know, and a lot of the times the, the runs are scored away from the ball. And so you have to be able to, you have a, you have an obligation to convey that information to the folks at home, how you do it traditionally is to be able to, you have an obligation to convey that information to the folks at home. How you do it traditionally is to cut to the tight shot of the runner as he's rounding third base or crossing home. There's an inherent problem in that when it comes to doing that, though, because you don't want to take that cut before the ball gets into the outfielder's glove, just in case the ball kicks around off his glove and, you know, careens off into the corner or something like that. You want to make sure you show that the

outfielder feels the ball cleanly, and then you're free to take the cut of the runner, the tight shot, and then you cut back to the high shot of the throw coming in. But a lot of the times, by making that cut, you're missing the relay, the most exciting part. That's why I really liked what they did on that broadcast where they went to the high angle. But there are a few risks associated with making a cut like that. The first issue I have with it would be that if you watch the whole play from the pitch, they cut to the high home overhead shot first, which is what you do on 99.9% of all the plays. But then they cut directly from that shot to the high third angle.

So sometimes that wide shot to wide shot cut can be a little jarring for the folks at home. Ideally, you want to cut wide tight, wide tight. It's a less jarring transition. It's easier to track the ball when you do it that way. My second problem would be that although it worked perfectly and I applaud them making that decision by staying as wide as you are, you sort of lose the ball in that right field corner. So if the ball kicked around it all down there or did something funky in the corner or got past the outfielder or whatever, you know, fan jumped on the field, whatever it may be, you're going to be so wide.

It's going to be hard to tell what's going on down there. That would be my first issue. And these are all little nitpicks. that high third camera, a lot of the times, and this is not a blanket rule, but a lot of the times on most broadcasts, that camera will be what we call a tight shag camera and will be a super slow-mo camera. So their responsibility would be to go with the ball tight and the fielder tight so that on replay, if something happens down in the corner, like I said, ball kicks around off his glove, whatever, or if it's a great relay like it was, you have a tight shot of the outfielder fielding it cleanly and making the throw. That would be my second. So you would lose that by staying wide like you did. The

biggest issue for me is that by staying that wide, you lose the definitive look for the ball landing a fair foul, which is, it could come into play. It could not come into play. But a lot of times that camera, that high third camera shooting down the first baseline is the definitive look when it comes to fair foul. Listen, I don't know what their camera allotment is. I don't know if they had cameras in the outfield, whatever. Maybe they had it covered. But those are the small little nitpicks that you have and the risks involved with making

a decision like that. It's sort of why baseball is covered the way that it is so that you don't miss anything. Because that, at the end of the day, is the goal when it comes to doing baseball is to not miss anything, to service the viewers at home by making sure you're covering not only the big picture stuff, but the minutiae of the game. But there is some wiggle room for creativity, and I applaud it, and I embrace it, obviously. But just so the folks at home realize that there are inherent risks and decisions being made by the millisecond, every baseball broadcast, when it comes to when to cut, when not to cut,

when to stay wide, when to stay tight. It's a constant battle over the course of a three-hour ballgame. And there are thousands of decisions made by a producer, a director over the course of a game. If we're doing our job right, you don't miss anything, but you also don't lose perspective either. And it's a constant battle. That answer makes me wonder, like, did you find yourself as you were progressing through your career and making these decisions, which I imagine given the speed with which you have to make them often have to feel kind of instinctual, like, are you depending on your feel for like what an average fielder might do in a particular situation, how likely a guy is

to score to determine where your cuts are coming from? Like, do you find yourself consciously thinking that in the moment or do you just have, you know, sort of instinct for it now? It's instincts for one, baseball, and two, for the television mechanics in general. So in baseball, every single camera, and we have 20 of them on our home Mets broadcast at Citi Field, every single camera has a specific assignment depending on the situation in the game. So depending on the outs and the runners on base, even sometimes lefty, righty hitting, every camera has a different assignment and it changes and each camera operator knows those assignments so there's a lot of the times where i'm able to take a cut

and i don't even have to look at the camera because i know that that that camera is going to has that assignment so that allows me to sort of think two or three steps ahead when it comes to making that cut it's also you have to you have to have a bedrock of baseball knowledge as well. You have to know if the guy on first can score on a ball in the gap. You have to know if the left fielder has a better arm than the right fielder. You have to know your arms in the outfit and you have to know the speed of the base runners. You have to, you know, for me, I've actually, the last couple of years, I've found that it's come in handy to see the batter's spray charts.

So you can sort of, especially on the road, you can sort of position your road cameras to their trends, to the batter's trends. Just so you, you know, if a guy pulls the ball down the line against righties, you can kind of position one of your cameras to isolate the first baseman because there's a 60% chance that he against the right-handed pitchers that he's going to pull it to the right side. So you can kind of make decisions like that. So it's, it's a little, it's a mix of baseball. It's a mix of television. It's about being surrounded by talented personnel and knowing, and the trust that they're going to, they're going to be there. It's a challenging thing, but it's at the end of the day, hopefully it comes across as a,

you know, a coherent baseball broadcast. Another play that Sam mentioned where we're not necessarily seeing the whole picture is when you zoom in on the shortstop on a ground ball double play or a close play at first. Right. And you can't see the runner and the ball and the fielder all at the same time. I guess it's just a frustration where fans, they want to feel like they're at the ballpark without actually being at the ballpark, right? They want to just see everything you can see there. And that's really difficult to convey on TV. So I'll just read you a couple of questions we got along those lines. I'll kind of combine them and you can take it wherever you want. There was one question. Could we ever move away from the centerfield angle from behind the pitcher as the default setup?

What would that look like? So that's like a complete reinvention. Are we doing it all wrong? Then we got a question, will we ever get to the point where we can actually see an infield line out live? Last one, someone said a friend who watches F1 noted how for races you can get a stream with a whole bunch of constant camera feeds at different angles, dashboard, close up, wide shot, et cetera. The viewer can pick and choose which of the feeds to watch in split screen. Could something like that ever work for baseball? So someone who wants to do your job themselves, I guess. So that's a whole bunch of questions. Basically, like,

can we reinvent the wheel here somehow? As far as covering the pitch from a non-centerfield camera, I would love to start doing that more often. It's all about having the angle. I want to cover as many pitches over the course of the game from behind home plate as possible. And we have a great position at Citi Field that we have more or less perfected over the last few years. The goal is to make sure you can, one, see the plate, one, see the hitter, and you know, top bottom. It's not perfect. Every time I do it, I get about five or six DMs and tweets about people saying, go back to center field or, you know, stop covering pitches from behind that, from that stupid camera angle. We can't see anything. You know, people have been watching baseball the same way for the last, you know, I don't know, 60, 70 years. And so it's hard to make that change.

But my goal is to use that camera behind home plate at least for five pitches a game. And when we use it, you know, you have to be strategic about it. You want to try to, you know, get a fastball. And when it's a fastball coming, you want to boost the mics a little bit to give the viewer a little bit more

of what it's like to be in the box, because that's the ultimate goal. You lose a lot of the speed of the game when you're on that centerfield camera. You can obviously see break and whatnot, but I've been in a batter's box. It is nothing like what you see from the centerfield camera. Sometimes it looks easy to hit. I'm not breaking any news to you guys. I mean, hitting a baseball is very hard. And I really want to try to convey that to the viewers at home and try to put them in the box as much as possible. If it were up to me and I I'd love to,

I'd love to cover as many pitches as possible from alternate positions. Unfortunately, I don't know how realistic that is to do it more than a handful of times. But if you pick your spots and you know the game, you can take a few chances here and there and try some different things out. It really helped when they did real signs and I could know what pitch is coming. So that if I saw a call for a high fastball, I would go to that camera because I could, I would, the high fastball is perfect for that camera.

Cause one, you have the velocity, you have the sound of the glove pop and you can see the ball. It's not going to get lost in the catcher shin guards or the umpire or whatever. So that's, that was a, that was a big part of what I do, you know, is, is the catcher signs. So losing that was actually quite a big impact. And I used to always love the cat and mouse between the catcher and the pitcher. And that was just another part of the chess game that I always loved.

But that's gone. So, but that, losing the signs actually made it a little more difficult to go to that camera because you have to almost, it's almost a coin flip sometimes. So yeah. So to answer your question, yes, I think there is a way. Sometimes. So, yeah. So to answer your question, yes, I think there is a way. I would I would love to work with maybe PitchCast or somebody on when I go to that camera, maybe have a graphic on the right that has the strike zone that you can see, you know, whether it's a ball or strike from there. There's a way to do it. We just haven't perfected it. There's a way to do it. We just haven't perfected it, but we are always constantly racking our brains about how to broadcast the pitch in a different way because there's 300 pitches every night. If we didn't cover 10 to 15 of them from behind home plate, is it really going to kill anybody? we've been working so hard over the last four or five years to get that camera position we've

always had one behind home plate but it was always a little too low we finally got an angle last year that we thought worked because it was high enough it was actually in the aisle way in between the seats of the you know the the really expensive seats down low um and like literally right next to a seat so if somebody was like sitting in that front row, they had a camera like right beside their head and the Mets were, you know, they worked with us over the course of many years. It wasn't easy, but they finally agreed to this position that didn't interfere with the fans

too much. And it didn't block any of the signage behind home plate for the ads. But unfortunately the Mets and city field are redesigning that whole behind home plate now. And so they're getting new LED screens and that whole seating area is going to be set up differently. So I don't know what we're going to have back there next year. We may even have to lose the camera for, you know, from the position that it's in and go back to that low angle. So I don't I don't know exactly, but I am eager to explore, you know, different ways of covering the pitch for sure. We did get a question speaking of alternate angles about whether it's really true that the league office has replay angles that the broadcast don't.

As far as I know, no. Before the game, someone from Major League Baseball comes to our truck and the visitor's truck, and they calibrate all of the cameras back to home base. So all the cameras at around 3.30, 4 o'clock have to shoot this blinking tally light that's on the field to make sure all of the cameras are in sync. And they test that all back at home base. And as far as I know that that is the camera compliment that they use the home and the road shows cameras um they have other cameras i i i wouldn't know um all i know is that you know our our replay person harrison with the mets had one of the best uh has had one of the best records when it comes to challenges over the last few years i think a lot of that credit should go to the new york camera guys city field because has had one of the best records when it comes to challenges over the last few years.

I think a lot of that credit should go to the New York camera guys at Citi Field because they get the shots that a lot of cities don't. So that comes into it. I mean, sometimes we'll be on the road and, you know, we'll go to the replays and you just don't have the shot. And so there's nothing definitive about it. So you're kind of at the mercy of who's running these cameras in all of these cities. I guess this is sort of a play on the question I asked you earlier, but are there camera angles in other cities where you're like,

God, we got to get a camera there. That's great. I want that shot. Yeah. I mean, a lot of these teams, their compliment at home has sort of grown with the newest technology. I know in Seattle, they've had a cable cam the last couple years. I mean, that's insane. That would never allow us to do that at Citi Field. drone for a series. And they had some of the most incredible shots that I think I've ever seen on a baseball broadcast. I was so jealous. But you can't have a drone at Citi Field that close to LaGuardia. That's just never going to happen. Oh, sure. So there's new technology coming out, whether it be, you know, the biggest fad recently has been the shallow depth of field, like Steadicam handheld, where, you know, it's almost that video game look where the background is out of focus and you have that really sharp image of whoever's in the foreground.

Oh, sure. You see it on Fox Sports broadcasts a lot. You know, for me, that's a little overused. They use it on the NFL. They'll use it on every touchdown in the end zone. You get that same shot every single time. And so for me, I would use it a lot more sparingly. But there's a chance we might implement that a little bit this year.

Our handheld camera guy, Pete Stendhal, who's a legend in this business. He's been around forever. He's the guy that followed in Diaz from the bullpen a couple years ago. And for me, he's probably more effective with a traditional handheld camera. And we get stuff that nobody else gets with him, whether they have this shallow depth of field camera or not. They call it the Megalodon, that camera, that shallow depth of field camera. But this year on SMY, we're going to bring in a camera called the Phantom, which is a super slow-mo replay system and camera. So it's that camera that's down in the dugouts or the camera wells

that shoots the batter. When the ball hits the bat, you see the bat reverberate, and you see the ball compress. Oh, sure. So we're going to implement one of those this year for a handful of games. We experimented with it last year for a couple games, but this year it's going to be more of a permanent toy for us to play with at home this year. So you're always looking for new technology and new ways to do the game. And it's just a matter of, one, knowing what's out there.

Two, having the person to operate it. And three, having the money to go purchase it. And, you know, that's where our sales team comes in. Try to sell this to like, you know, Ford or whoever and see if they'll sponsor this camera. But, you know, you don't always win those battles. So you have to kind of make do with what you have. I know you've described baseball as the most cinematic sport. And obviously it's been one of the richest sports source material for Hollywood.

Have you ever gotten an idea that you've tried to incorporate into a real baseball broadcast from a baseball movie, from some angle in a baseball movie? Or are you jealous of a director in a baseball movie who can put the camera wherever they want, whenever they want, and you don't have the freedom to do that? That's the thing. Like, you know, a lot of those baseball movies, their cameras are on the field. So, you know, they're right behind the pitcher. And I, I'd love to do that. You know, it's last year we had the, was that two years ago? Maybe it was two years ago. We had old timers day at city field. I put handhelds on the field for that. And it was so much fun to like, you know, have a camera behind the pitcher

or stick it right over the umpire's shoulder. At one point, I stuck one in left field and he got a fly ball hit right at him. It's that kind of stuff that you would never get that I am jealous of. Although, if you watch the postseason this year on home runs, they have the access like you wouldn't believe. They have cameras on the field as they're like running,

getting the first base and putting across the infield and bringing people home. It's pretty spectacular what they've been able to do with their access when it comes to the big networks that we don't always get as a regional network. But I didn't ask you what your favorite baseball movie is, which seems like an oversight given that you're such a big baseball and movie guy. So what is your favorite baseball movie? And do you have different answers for the baseball part and the movie part? That is, do you have one that you think captures baseball really well, but you like another more for the cinematic aspects?

That's a really good question. I'm not sure anybody's ever asked me that before because my my my go to my go to answers are usually it always was Major League. Growing up, Major League was my favorite movie. I watched that movie probably way too young. And, you know, I love all the characters in that movie. But, you know, I wasn't really aware of the, you know, the the filmmaking aspect of it. I just thought it was funny and I loved baseball. And I loved Pedro Serrano and Roger Dorn and Ricky Vaughn coming out of the bullpen. So that was always my go-to answer. Since I have a daughter now who's three and a half, my wife says that my answer has to be a league of their own. So that has become one of my, my go-to answers.

It is a great baseball movie. Don't get me wrong. Love league of their own. And you can't go wrong with the bad news bear. So I guess, I, I guess, you know,

the thing about baseball movies, a lot of them are comedies, but if you, if you really want to get down to the, I guess the, the, the most well-made baseball movie, I guess my first instinct is to say Field of Dreams. But that may just be that it has James Earl Jones with his Darth Vader voice giving that amazing speech.

And you have Shoeless Joe coming out of the cornfields. And there's a lot of cinema, quote unquote, in that movie. And actually, when Major League Baseball did the Field of Dreams game a couple years ago, I absolutely loved what they did with that broadcast, where they had the players come in from the outfield. They even had Costner there. It was so cinematic, what they did with that broadcast. And I have to give props to Matt Gangl, the director who broadcasted that game. He does

the World Series for Fox and a lot of their postseason and all-star work. And I sent him a note after the game, and I just thought what they did was magical. And it's exactly the poetry and the richness that you only have with baseball that you can't get out of other sports. And that's why baseball is to see so much. But I wonder how you navigate that on your broadcast because you have Gary, Keith, and Ron, right? And so that has to be the big draw. You just want to hear those guys talk. And I know that they may have mixed feelings about some of the stats

that have permeated baseball broadcasts. And I remember seeing a quote from Keith. I think he was on a radio show last year and he was talking about how Gary has to say exit velocity 100 miles an hour or 108 miles an hour. I could care less. I know when someone hits the dog out of the ball. I don't care what kind of miles per hour it is. Right. So, yeah. How do you try to sort of stay with the times or help drive the times without it turning into a total StatCast broadcast because you just want to hang out with those guys. It's a slippery slope for us. It really is. And it's something that is,

it's constantly on our minds in the truck because we don't want to sound like dinosaurs, but you have to. And even for me, I'm 36 years old. I played baseball my whole life. I've been at SMY now for, this will be my 16th season coming up. It's hard for me to keep up with it. And it's hard for me to look at the non-traditional stats and find a lot of things that I can get a lot of merit out of just because I don't have the point of comparison from the stats that I had growing up. Listen, and they're useful, and there is an audience for those statistics. So it's our job behind the scenes to not try to shove them down viewers'

throats or the announcer's throats, but to maybe do one thing a game that is certainly a non-traditional baseball stat or give a number that Keith may find interesting given context. And then that's the most important thing for us as a broadcast entity is to give these statistics some sort of context. Because without context, it's just a decimal in three digits. And so if we're able to give an explanation of why that number exists and how it translates to decisions that are being made on the field and in the clubhouse by the manager making

up the lineup card, then that's us doing our job in a world where advanced analytics and statistics drive the game so much. Here's one that you touched on, the in-game graphics that you used to work on. And we got a question from Grant who said, how much is involved in developing the in-game graphics? Do they go through beta testing with groups of viewers or is it just an internal process? How much does audience feedback contribute to the decisions? And I guess that goes for any graphics, but also maybe for the score bug, which, of course, a lot of people are intensely interested in those. You know, I like to think that our group has a pretty good feel for what works and what doesn't.

Obviously, we do a lot of unique things when it comes to the graphics because we have the booth that's able to react and react accordingly. And it doesn't seem out of place or out of left field. But when we do anything great or anything that's out of the ordinary, you try not to oversaturate. You want to kind of leave the viewer wanting more. And so when it comes to those kind of oddball things that are different, you don't want to overuse them

because that's how things get stale. And we don't get a lot of feedback from fans. Nothing goes through any kind of beta testing or if this works or if it doesn't. We do way too many games for that. And our testing ground is the game. Whether it's a graphic or a piece of video or a new transition or whatever it may be. If you're doing pre-production every day and running, worrying about what, what's going to work and what's not going to work, you're going to have

a long season. You know, it's, it's, it's the, the best thing and the worst thing about baseball is that it's played every day. I'm probably a little more conscious of what fan reaction is because I'm a little more online than most of, you know, everybody else. And so I kind of have an idea of what's going on or, you know, it's. And so I kind of have an idea of what's going on or, you know, it's hard for me to check in game, obviously, but, you know, we have a, one of the four positions is the associate director. And it's a guy named Eddie Warman. And he's back in the replay room with those guys and editing packages and bumps and teases and whatever, you know, they do back there. And if we do something or something is said, he will do a quick look on Twitter to make

sure, you know, it's being received in the appropriate fashion, whether that be something that Keith said by accident or, you know, something, you know, creative that we do. Right. So maybe a last one here from our Patreon people. So Jacob asks, what are your least favorite shots you feel you have to take and why are they your least favorite? And then we got two questions about, I guess, people who want you to give away state secrets and things that you want to try. or edit that the directors always talk about doing but haven't been able to do? Or do you have any experimental cinematographic effects, ideas that you haven't been able to implement yet? Have you ever had an experimental concept die due to impracticality?

So, yeah. I'll start with my least favorite shot. Okay. So, this actually will tie in to your second question before when somebody asked about if we're ever going to see a line drive caught by an infielder live. Okay. So my least favorite shot, or maybe my least favorite, I guess it's an overlay at this point, is the pitch cast on the center field camera, the box over home plate. Okay. SMY was the last regional network to implement that box. We fought long and hard to keep it off the screen.

I know it's just become part of the mesh of baseball now, and everybody expects it. But we fought really hard to keep it off the screen because every single pitch, for me, is a little drama. You have these little moments where, one, how do I recognize that pitch? Is it a ball or a strike to my eye? Second of all, will the umpire call it a ball and strike? And third of all, how will the batter or bench react to that call? So there's three little dramas on every single pitch. And I feel like a lot of that's been lost with the pitch box.

I know everyone likes knowing the information and likes getting the information. But over the course of a three-hour game, those three little dramas every single pitch, they add up to a little more and it takes something away from the game. Another thing, and this gets back to the line drive question, is that pitch cast has a delay. So the center field camera that you're seeing at home with the box overlay, there is a minimum eight frame delay. So when that ball is put in play, when I take the high home shot,

there is an eight frame delay. And that is a big delay when it comes to line drives and when it comes to pickoffs. So a lot of the times, the ball will already be in the glove by the time I get the camera to the high home camera because of that delay. Or the ball will already be in the first baseman's mitt when I have to cut the pickoff. And so that's a, that way, if I had to say what my least favorite thing is, it would be the center field camera with the pitch cast overlay because it slows everything down and it doesn't, the juice ain't worth the squeeze for me. The other thing is that on some broadcasts, at least it looks different in the box.

Like the image is more saturated or something inside the box than everywhere else. Like it focuses your eye on the box, but it's distracting. Yeah, well, there's no set parameters for what, you know, for every broadcast has their own, you know, what they, the thickness and the, whether they want the pitch speed or if they want the ball to leave a mark. And unfortunately that camera, so all of our cameras at home and on the road are brought into a group of guys, the video technicians, and they paint those cameras to make sure that they all match and make sure that they're all in time and make sure that the cameras are not too overexposed, not too dark. And they have control that.

Unfortunately, that pitch cast camera, we're sending that feed to pitch cast and they're sending it back to us. And so sometimes the information doesn't translate or doesn't match or is out of time or out of sync. There's a lot of things that can go wrong. That's why, you know, inevitably two or three times a game, we have to lose the pitch cast. It'll just disappear for an at bat. You know, I'm sure people have noticed that. That's when we're having technical issues or, you know, it's glitching or it's freezing. It's a frustrating part of what has become standardized in the game when it comes to broadcasts. And is there anything that you care to hint at or something that you tried and it didn't work

or something that you still want to try that you can break some news here? I, you know, I've, I'm always pushing for more access. And, you know, I brought up, I brought up what they do in the post-season with cameras on the field. You kind of have to build these relationships with, you know, the teams and the staff. And it's become harder and harder to do that since COVID. I mean, it's, we used to be really tight with, you know, the team that we'd be on the same bus, we'd be on the same, you know, we'd be more intermixed in the plane and, you know, COVID happened and they sort of have segregated us, you know, away from the team.

And it's made it a little more difficult to, um, to, to have the access and build the relationships with these guys to, to build the trust that, um, you need with a TV entity and a team. Um, and we're, you know, we're sort of a, a different monster because we're not quote unquote homers. And so it's, um, sometimes it's, it's not, sometimes it's not always easy, you know, uh, getting the access that you want with the team because, you know, everybody's mother's watching and cousins and sisters. And can you, did you hear what Ron

Darling or Keith Hernandez said to you in the third inning about you in the third inning last night? You know, they're, they're hearing that second hand. And then, you know, it's, you know, there, there are some teams that are not broadcast teams that are not allowed to show the manager when a negative play happens. And so that's, that, that comes from the team. I don't, I obviously don't have that. I can kind of do what I want. Obviously I'm not trying to be mean or trying to, you know, convey something that may not necessarily be true. But I have an editorial responsibility to take the shots that I need to

to the viewers at home to broadcast the games. And I don't have any real restrictions when it comes to that, thankfully. But that's not always the most popular thing with the team. And so it's a balance that you have to sort of play. And it's not the most fun part of this job. But as far as cinematic devices, I really, with the pitch clock, and I started this last year, there is so much to be done with split screen during a baseball broadcast.

Because you don't always have to take the cut. And now you don't really always have time to take the cut. And so I'm going to have different variations of split screens whether it's um showing the runner showing the manager and you know last year i built a device that from the center field camera i'm able to slide multiple things all over the screen and you know sometimes it works in a big spot and sometimes it doesn't but there's something there that i think enhances the game and lets the viewer know that this may be a big moment there's a there's a you know there's a handful of moments every single game you don't always know they're going to be the moment but when they but when they are and you you're able to build that moment correctly and with a you know

whether it be one of these devices or a graphic to set something up or whatever it may be. It's so gratifying to be able to enhance the product at home for the people watching at home. I've said this before. I want people that are at Citi Field watching the games to have FOMO about what they're missing on SMY at home. I want them to worry. They're not going to know what Keith said in the third inning about his taxes or whatever, or his cash. Or John did a Fellini homage in the fifth inning or whatever. I want them to be thinking that when they're sitting in the stands. So that's sort of the goal.

Well, you guys do a great job. It's an incredible broadcast. And I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next. So thanks for taking us behind the scenes. Hopefully we'll talk again sometime. I'd love to. Yeah, I was going to ask you what the best movie you saw lately was, but I looked at your letterbox and I'm guessing it's Godzilla Minus One. Godzilla Minus One, it was so good.

It was so good. I think it'll probably be in my top 10 to 15 when the season, when the year ends. Yeah. My number one right now is actually Infinity Pool. Have you seen that one yet? No. It's Brandon Cronenberg, David Cronenberg's son. It's very good.

Okay. Well, I will definitely link to your letterbox so people can get your movie recs as well. Absolutely. Thanks again, John. Thank you so much. All right. That will do well. Absolutely. Thanks again, John. Thank you so much. All right, that will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

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We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. The wacky hypotheticals are perfectively styled. And the stat blast queries are detectively compiled non-Agerian baseball legends selectively dialed but their

spiciest takes are still respectfully mild more than 2000 episodes retrospectively filed and at each new one we still collectively smile that's effectively wild