Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2162: The Kershaw Narrative

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Pirates calling up top pitching prospect Paul Skenes, Mookie Betts’s shortstop defense, Willson Contreras, the causes of increasingly common catcher’s interference calls, and catcher technique in an ABS world, rampant reliever shuffling, Chase Anderson as a Phiten necklace “endling,” two ways in which amateur prospects are possibly […]

effectively wild it's war with a smile effectively wild it's the good stuff it's baseball nerd stuff we hope you'll stick around for a while. Hello and welcome to episode 2162 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello Meg, how are you? Skins, skins, skins, skins, skins, skins, skins, skins, skins! Skins! Skins! I came back to my computer a moment ago.

I was muted. I had sent Meg the link to join me and then I walked away for a minute and then I came back and all I heard was Meg saying Skins, Skins, Skins. Not knowing that I wasn't there or knowing that I wasn't there. I'm not sure. It might not have made any difference.

I knew you were muted and I assumed that like Grumpkin was barking or you were futzing with your microphone. No, I wasn't even there. So you were saying skeans to yourself. And when I returned and heard you saying skeans, that's how I learned that Paul Skeens was caught up by the Pittsburgh Pirates. So maybe some people learned that from hearing you say Skeens on this podcast, but probably not because they probably heard about that before we published this podcast because it's pretty big prospect call-up news. Yeah, it's very big prospect call-up news. In fact, he's going to start Saturday for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Exciting. Skeens day. Yeah. When a super tippy top prospect gets called up, it is both big news and yet completely predictable and sometimes overdue.

So you're not surprised exactly, but you're still excited, elated perhaps if you're a Pirates fan. And you've been thrilling to the exploits of Jared Jones. And now suddenly there's another one. Paul Ski's coming up. This is fun. Yeah. Ski's. Ski's.

Ski's. It's a heck of a top of the future rotation or present rotation, I guess now. But, I mean, you can never count on pitchers, obviously, not to be a wet blanket here. Wow. But, you know, enjoy them while they last, Pirates fans. Because there's no such thing as a pitching... No, I don't want to do that now, at least enjoy the debut

and then, you know, at some point, the pitcher reaper will come for all, but it's great. It's belated, if anything. He's been totally dominant. We've talked about the fact that his early outings at AAA at least were not long ones.

And we wondered about the wisdom of that or at least discussed it because it was being more widely discussed. But yeah, I mean, he has been 1.32 ERA at AAA Indianapolis, 27 and a third innings pitched, 45 strikeouts, eight walks. strikeouts eight walks yeah and you know he's still not going super long in his last couple but you know four and a third six four and a third so it's creeping up i do wonder how long his uh debut will last not because i think he's gonna you know snap in half or sproing but because you know they've been very careful with him and as we've discussed they have been pretty judicious with jones and his own usage so i imagine that if everything goes well if everything goes to plan if paul skeens delights he will probably leave you know both pirates fans and prospect observers wanting more because that seems to be what uh

pittsburgh is doing with their guys lately. But very exciting. Skeins! Every outing for him has been three-something or four-something, except for the six that you mentioned two starts ago. And he threw 75 pitches in that game. So it wasn't like they really stretched him out. They stretched him out in terms of innings, not in terms of pitch count,

which was kind of our complaint that time that we talked about that, was that they seemed to be going based on innings and not so much by pitch count. So, at least this time, they let him go as long as his pitch count called for, but it wasn't a high pitch count. So, I don't know whether they will continue to hold him to that low a level. They might just have thought, well, we don't want to waste any pitches while he's down there. But then the drawback is that, well, he's not really prepared to throw more pitches once you ask him to, but they could ramp him up if they want him to. And Pirates fans will be happy to have him for any number of innings. It's better than no innings at the major league level. So that's exciting. Yeah yeah and despite my very bold predictions yeah the pirates

as we are recording on wednesday afternoon are 17 and 21 um so it could be going better you know it could be better than it is right now um and so uh what an exciting thing. Yeah. Good thing. Skeens. Yeah. Even if they don't end up contending or making the playoffs, which is not out of the realm of possibility, but even if they don't, the foundation is there. Things are looking up. Right. I mean, that rotation, you have Jared Jones, you have Paul Skeens, who, I mean, Skeens, top pitching prospect in baseball. You have Paul Skeens, who, I mean, Skeens, top pitching prospect in baseball. If for some reason Jared Jones were not in the majors right now, he might be the top pitching prospect in baseball other than Skeens, given just how incredible he's looked.

And then Quinn Priester was called up, too. And you have Mitch Keller signed for some time. I mean, that's not bad. And, you know, I don't want to slight Bailey Falter. But, you know, they're all young. They're all 28 or younger, except for Martin Perez, the resident veteran. But, man, like to have Jones and Skeens and Keller and Priester to be able to pencil them in for years to come to the extent that you can forecast any pitcher for years to come. That's pretty darn solid. And then add that to Brian Hayes and O'Neill Cruz and the promise of that duo, even if they haven't fully fulfilled it yet. And yeah, Henry Davis got off to a very

slow start and they sent him back down and there are still questions, but you look at that core that's coming together there, pretty encouraging. Yeah. You could say that promoting skeins gives Bailey room to falter. You could say that, but we wouldn't. We wouldn't say such a thing. I would say that.

I have the courage of my convictions, Ben. Yeah. Yeah. So even with Andy Rodriguez missing a year, there's just a lot to get excited about over there. So happy for you Pirates fans because you haven't had that many reasons to get excited about your baseball team in recent years. But it's paying off.

It's looking up. So that's exciting. We will discuss that after it happens. So you know how we talked recently about how it's really too early to be looking at Winsor-Puff replacement. It's almost irresponsible. Yes.

And part of the reason why is because of defensive stats that make up a chunk of the value. And we know small samples, defensive stats in defensive runs saved here on May 8th. I wouldn't ask that, but hypothetically, we engage in a lot of hypotheticals here. So just imagine a world where I asked you that. Would you know the answer to that question? Let's see. Would I know the answer to that question? Is it Willie Adamas? It's not Willie Adamas. Okay. Who is actually playing shortstop for the Padres these days?

That's a great question. It's really hard to keep track. Presumably, Ha Sung Kim. Yeah, is it Ha Sung Kim? He had a tremendous season in the fields last year. Just really great. Superlative. He'd be a great guess, but no, it is not Ha Sung Kim. No, he's dead average according to DRS so far. What a loser. Is it Elie de la Cruz? a loser. Is it Elie de la Cruz? It's not Elie de la Cruz. No, he actually doesn't rate all that well

defensively despite all the great offensive work he's doing. Yeah, it's better maybe, but it's not great yet, perhaps. Oh, gosh. Is it

is it Dansby Swanson? It is not Dansby Swanson. No, it's he's also average. Yeah. He's very good. Whatever those nerd-ass stats might say. Is it Mookie Betts?

It is Mookie Betts. It took me a long time to remember that Mookie Betts plays shortstop now. I know. It's not intuitive, Ben. Why would such a thing be happening? It's not locked in. And yet not only is it happening, I applaud you on not even guessing Charlie Culberson after you guessed

Dansby Swanson. Thank you. You knew it wasn't Culberson. Is he on a team? Culberson? No, I don't believe so. I don't want him to be unsigned. I just need him to be as far away from Dansby Swanson as possible. Yeah, it's Mookie Betts. Wow. Technically, he's tied

with Mason Wynn of the Cardinals. Wow, it's Mason Wynn. Yeah, sometimes with the Fangraphs leaderboards, you sort a certain way and it looks tied to you. But under the hood, if you were to expand to additional decimal places, you would see that it is in that order for a reason. But DRS, probably not because it's probably just a whole run numbers, I would imagine. So you could say they're tied. So maybe I'm stretching a little bit here. But even if we say he's tied for the National League lead in DRS, and I'm saying National League because Bobby Witt Jr. is on top at eight runs above average.

But Mookie, yeah, Bobby Witt Jr., 319 innings in the field. Good for Bobby Witt Jr., man. Absolute superstar. He got paid like one, and he's playing like one. What a cool thing. He's had 319 innings in the field. Mookie has had a mere 243 innings in the field, and yet he is nipping at Witt's heels at plus seven. Wow.

Now, am I cherry-picking slightly by focusing on DRS? Yeah, I am. Of course you are. Because it made for a sexier stat. And as we established, it would be irresponsible to read too much into this anyway. Yeah. But he is also rated above average by outs above average, the stat cast based stat. He is rated above average also by baseball prospectuses, defensive runs prevented, a.k.a. Derp.

He is eighth in the majors among shortstops in Derp. Look, on the one hand, I would prepare to apologize to Craig, but look, you had to know. You had to know we were going to call it Derp. He has said that he did not know, like he did not anticipate, and yet he has fully accepted and resigned himself to it. Unexplained innocence in the world, you know? But the point is, whatever stat you look at, pretty much, Mookie is either well above average to like maybe the best or close to the best, I think it's not too soon to say that, like, yeah, as subject to randomness

and fluctuation and opportunities and performance as defensive stats are, if he were going to be a disaster out there, then that would have shown up by now. And in his extremely small sample last year, he was a little bit below average. And I think the eye tests basically match that. Like the skills, the athleticism clearly there, but he would sometimes flub the routine plays. Like, you know, the footwork was a little wonky. Like he didn't have it fully down. Why would he? Right.

But now in his second crack at the position, even though he didn't have a full spring training to prepare for this, he is looking good. He's handling those routine plays. He's making some spectacular ones too. And I don't know if he's actually going to end up being well above average or like one of the leading shortstops in the game. That would be really a tall order. But he is more than holding his own there.

Like it's not going to be a liability for LA to have Mookie Pets at shortstop. And how incredible a thing is that given the path that he took to this position? I feel like my question is sort of a silly one because I don't think at this juncture, even entering this season, prior to us observing his play at short, even prior to us knowing that he was going to be Mookie Betts' starting shortstop, would you have said in, let's pick a random date, on November 19th of last year, would you have said, Mookie Betts, future Hall of Famer? Oh, of course. Yeah, okay. Of course. Of course. Of course you would. You watch baseball, you see the stats.

He's transcendent. He's one of the best players of his generation, such a fun player to watch. You know, great. Love Mookie. And so it's silly because it's like he already had an incredible case. It didn't really require bolstering, but it's just one of the most wildly impressive things I think I've ever seen on a baseball field. You know, like it is an incredibly difficult position. It is an incredibly difficult position. He has famously been an outfielder for most of his major league career. It's just a really incredible thing for him to have been able to finagle his way into. He's 31.

He's going to be 32. Ancient. You know, like, I hurt myself bending over sometimes. Or, like, I sit too long and then it's like my hip flexors are just messed up for, like, a week. You stretch so much. No, it's not because of that, Ben. No, it's because I don't. No.

No, we're not. I'm so angry. Oh, I'm mad again. You're not so angry. Oh, I'm mad again. But it's just, again, his is not a case that requires reinforcement. It was structurally sound to begin with. Him suddenly becoming a shortstop is not a load-bearing position change when it comes to his case for Cooperstown. But it's just a wildly, wildly impressive thing.

And he's still playing some second base. Like Miguel Rojas has played 100 innings at short. So Mookie is still moving around and getting different looks and different angles. And it's just awesome. It's awesome. It's just the purest ball player. It's awesome. Just stick him anywhere.

He can do anything. I love it. I love him. I love him. It's just the best. It's amazing, Ben ball player. It's awesome. Just, like, stick him anywhere. He can do anything. I love it. I love him. I love him. It's just the best. It's amazing, Ben. Yeah. It's an amazing thing.

There were voices that said, like, oh, this might not work out so well. I mean, I wasn't sure that he'd be, like, good. I thought he'd be perfectly competent and fine. He's Mookie Betts. Like, I didn't think he was going to sink their season or anything. But I didn't know how well it would work out. And it seems like it's far from being a problem and might actually be a boost to them.

We'll see how the stats shake out. But yeah, he's more than capable. Can you imagine, like, if he had played one position his whole life? Like, sometimes specializing can be bad. Like all the studies seem to suggest that for amateur athletes, for youths, that they should not specialize too early, that you can get overuse injuries if you do.

And also maybe it's good to develop a broad set of skills by playing other sports and exposing yourself to other endeavors. But once you're in the big leagues, probably specializing could only help. And yet Mookie has bounced around and basically been good at everything he's been asked to do. He's just the man, so I'm enjoying it. And it's not even just the on-the-field play, but I have gained a greater appreciation for Mookie Betts as a leader, as a clubhouse presence, from reading a new book that we will be discussing later today.

Yeah. Our pal, Andy McCullough, has written a book about Clayton Kershaw, who is a teammate of Mookie Betts. That's not his main claim to fame, Clayton Kershaw, pretty great in his own right. But Andy wrote a book about Clayton Kershaw called The Last of His Kind, and it's out this week. And we read it, and we liked it. And we're going to talk to Andy about it shortly. But it does include some excellent anecdotes about how Mookie kind of changed the clubhouse culture when he went over to LA, put a charge into the team, challenged them. Yeah. Yeah. Boldly. When he was the new guy, he's like, hey, we got to do things differently here. This is how we win.

Right. And everyone sort of accepted it because he's Mookie Betts. You know, if you're like the fringe bench guy, you probably can't request to talk to the entire team and be like, hey, you guys stop slacking, stop taking plays off. But if you're Mookie Betts, you can do that kind of thing. And people will accept it. Do you think that it was because he was Mookie Betts and not just because they had all seen Uncut Gems recently and they're like, that is how they went?

We did not discuss this in the course of our conversation with Andy. If the landscapers had not arrived in the midst of our interview, might I have brought it up again? Who could say? But I loved this book. I thought it was very good. As I mentioned in the course of our conversation with Andy, I tend to not be like single player, single team book. That's not my preferred genre.

I want them to say something, you know, something more. I think in part because a lot of the single player, single team books can be a little fawning. They take a fawning approach. They're for fans. And that's fine. There's a place for that. But it just tends to not be the thing that I'm getting gravitated for. Also, they all want to be Moneyball because why wouldn't you?

And they don't – not every team can be the basis of a Moneyball kind of book. Just like they reinvented everything. They do everything differently. A lot of times they don't. Yeah, not everyone's Michael Lewis, but also the material is not always quite as strong. So there are a lot of books in that vein. And you sort of pitch it to publishers as, oh, this is so. It's an extra.

Right. And so I don't tend to gravitate toward them. But I really loved this and thought it was great. But it did reignite my fiery disdain for that hand-cooked tires commercial, man. It just made me all – I am heated. I got grumpy about it all over again. The sequence of pitches he goes through in that commercial, it doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

Yeah. That's not covered in the book, right? There's a scene where he's filming his Skechers commercial. But yeah, the Hancock tires. I got all worked up, Ben. I just got so angry. I got so angry. It's not that he talks about the curveball.

That makes sense. But what is the changeup doing in there, Ben? Much of the book is about how he detests the changeup and couldn't ever throw one he was satisfied with. I'm so angry. And then he gives up a home run. The whole premise of the commercial is that he sucks. I have words for his agent, and I would share them, but they are impolite. I have words for his agent and I would share them, but they are impolite. So anyway, I got all worked up and, maybe that's what he wants pitchers to think. With the Hancock-Kirscher ad, some people did speculate it was a ruse on his part to

broadcast to batters that he'd be throwing more changeups so that they would then expect that. And then he would not do that. And he would confound their expectations, right? So can you imagine you're a big league hitter your livelihood is being able to like hit the ball with your bat and you strike out against clayton kershaw and you go back to the dugout and you're just like i don't know man i saw that commercial and i just thought i was gonna get a change up can you imagine telling your hitting coach that that would be funny i i hope that happened because i would laugh yeah if you're getting your scouting report from a Han Cook commercial, that's probably not ideal because there are much better resources available to you. Well, Clayton Kershaw, the last of his kind because when he was coming up, he wanted to pitch deep into games.

He never wanted to be removed. He would not have stood for a Paul Skeens-esque usage most likely. That would have rubbed him the wrong way. We will get to Andy and talk about Clayton Kershaw soon. A couple things before we do. Very painful injury for Wilson Contreras of the Cardinals, who has been by far the best bat in a mostly moribund St. Louis lineup.

Had his arm broken in a way that hurts to watch, like secondhand sort of sympathetic pain. I mean, it's not one of these highlights where like you see the bone break skin or something and you want to retch. No, it's just like, oh, that had to hurt. It sure looks like it did. Especially when a catcher reacts like that, because catchers are constantly getting hurt in one way or another, and they probably have a pretty high pain tolerance or they sort of no-sell these things.

But Contreras was writhing, right? Yeah. That hurt. And it happened on a catcher's interference. Yes. Which I guess does add some insult to injury. It's like not only did you get hurt, but then you get blamed for it. It was kind of your fault.

And technically, I guess it was. Like, we have talked a lot about the catcher's interference in recent years. And we've done deep dive discussions on why there are so many more than there used to be. May of 2022, episode 1850, we talked about it. Late April of 2023, episode 1999, we talked about it. Late April of 2023, episode 1999, we talked about it. Early in each of the last two seasons, we were like, wow, sure are a lot of catcher's interferences this season. Yes. And now we could say the same thing.

Yeah. And Sam Miller has written about this. He actually wrote about it and sent out a newsletter at Pebble Hunting just before the Contreras injury. Yeah. And what Sam was pointing out is that, yeah, it's happening more often yet again. And also it's happening so much more often that now it's happening on these just half-hearted check swings. It's not even like guys are taking full swings and then on the backswing or something, they make contact. It's like, they're not even really offering. The hitters are just kind of half swinging, tentatively swinging, and they're still making contact with the catcher's glove. And so Sam was saying he doesn't think that batters are doing this intentionally, that it would still be tough to pull that off

potentially and make it look good and everything. And he thinks that these are sort of accidental and incidental. But he did say that he thinks he predicted that within the next three years, there will be like a bench clearing brawl or something prompted by a catcher's interference when maybe the defensive team thinks that the batter was trying to do it intentionally. And Seb said, like, in the right situation, high leverage spot, it does seem like you could kind of get away with it now because all you have to do really is just – it's not even like it interferes with the swing in many cases. It's almost a misnomer. It's like the ball is by the batter basically and they're just taking like a late half swing and they make contact with the glove. And so it seems like it shouldn't even really be called. worst all, some intentional catcher's interference because it does seem weird that, like,

when it clearly doesn't actually interfere with the outcome of the swing, that the batter would still get some benefit from that, right? So the thing is, though, that in Contreras' case, this was not a half swing. I'm sure he wishes it were. It might not have imparted the same force, right? But it was not even on a backswing or anything. It was just full on like a swing and it hit Contreras' outstretched arm.

Yeah, it sure did. And this sort of thing is going to happen more often. I'm not saying like guys are going to be breaking their arms left and right. I guess those are the only two options when it comes to arms you can break. But we've already talked to Andy. Spoiler, that's not my last terrible play on words for this episode. I can confirm. Yeah.

But I just wonder at what point you start to kind of compromise safety, you know? Yeah. Because I think our speculation for why this is happening so often, and I should give you the numbers, I guess, and the what we're on pace for. Right. So 2021, there were 62 catchers interference calls all season. 2022, 2022, it went up to 74. 2023, it went up to 96. Pretty big jump.

Now, through not yet a quarter of the season, there have already been 33, which means we're on pace for 148 catcher's interference calls. It's kind of a strange thing where, like, the rates have skyrocketed. Yeah. And yet there aren't that many of them still. Right. have skyrocketed, and yet there aren't that many of them still. I mean, you know, if there were 148, that'd be by far the most ever in a season, and yet it's a pretty rare event, you know? Yeah. So it's, like, worthy of commenting on because it is so different from what it has been as of fairly recently,

and yet it's not like an epidemic exactly, like in a relative sense it is, but you're not going to be noticing it all that often. know there won't be that many broken arms probably well and i think that from there's like the batter's end of things and then there's you know there's the catching end of things and i think we have heard i think pretty conclusively at this point that part of what seems to have contributed to contraris's injury at least is that he like many catchers across baseball is moving up closer to the plate in an effort to frame better right and to get particularly to frame pitches low in the zone yeah and for Contreras you know a not unimportant thing for him to try to improve at because his framing numbers historically have not been particularly good right and so i can understand the calculus on the part of both catchers in

their teams where it's like look let's set his injury aside for a second because obviously that is like the extreme downside um sort of circumstance and and worst case scenario here but when you're you're just talking about the decision of am i able to frame the strike frame the pitch as a strike either to present it as a strike when it wasn't one or to make clear that it is in fact a strike and get the strike call you know you're talking about the all-time highest number we could potentially reach and it's like fewer than 150 catchers interferences interfere. I enter. It is hard. Instances of catchers interference.

How do we pluralize that? We have to figure that out because there are so many of them now. Yeah. And so, you know, and think about how many pitches there are. Just think about the, like, in a game, in a day's worth of games, right? And so if in a typical circumstance, worth of games right and so if in a typical circumstance the worst thing that happens is the batter is awarded first base you know and you don't have your starting backstop out until after the all-star break well you're probably going to make that trade every day right because strikes are so precious and you know you can really part of why framing ends up being so valuable to catchers is that you have so many chances and it really compounds over time. You can accrue a tremendous amount of value in a short amount of time because of how many pitches they have to catch. But there are so many. There are so many pitches.

And so if you can make more of them strikes, it's pretty good. You know, and so if you can, if you can make more of them strikes, like, it's pretty good. All of that to say, I agree with Sam that like, if what we are aiming for is decreasing the frequency with which we see a catcher's interference, or an instance where catcher's interference could be called, and I guess you could make the argument given the prevalence of this approach change that it is perhaps being under called right that there might be more but you know actual instances of catcher's interference than are being called on the fields but you know assuming you don't break your arm you're gonna keep doing this so it might it it might well require some rule book intervention if it's something we feel like we need to intervene on i won't share the team but like i I know of an instance a couple of years ago where a guy who was previously a pretty good framing catcher was seeing a dip in his numbers and the front office folks around him

kind of looked at his position relative to the plate and noticed that he had backed up. And then they were like, hey, you got to get in there. And he did. And then his numbers got better. And it was like, oh, well, you know, he was backed too far up. This is not a new phenomenon. But I think the aggressiveness with which some of these guys are moving up toward the plate is a meaningful shift.

So, yeah. Yeah. And also, I think it's just that, well, if this was not going to be a full swing, this wasn't the case in Contreras' incident. But if it was a swing that would have been ruled a check swing, like it wouldn't have been ruled a swing to begin with, then it probably shouldn't be a catcher's interference call because they didn't actually interfere with anything. It can be tough to tell in real time, though. It can be, yes. Did you stop because you were interfered with or would you have stopped anyway? So, I understand why that's a tough call to make in the moment.

But yeah, Contreras, he was one of the latest adopters when it came to the one-knee-down stance. And he's finally doing that now because it certainly does seem to enhance framing performance without sacrificing blocking performance. And he's finally gotten on board with that. I almost feel bad for him. It's like he's gotten on board with the latest trends. The Cardinals wanted him to move up. He did that. He's doing the one knee down.

And yet this is his reward, right? And it's not just that catchers are setting up closer to the plate, which they are both for framing reasons. And we talked to Tanner Swanson of the Yankees about this for blocking reasons, right? It can be beneficial for pass balls and wild pitches to get up close too. And for framing, it's just about trying to stop the ball before it falls too low. Like the higher you can catch it and intercept it, then the more it looks like a strike to the umpire.

Yes. Also, though, they're not just setting up closer. They're like reaching way out. Yes. Right? And that's a big part of it too. That's what happened here with Contreras. It may also be that

batters have moved back in the box a bit. There were some who accused J.D. Martinez, who was the swinger in this scenario, of maybe having his back foot behind the batter's box back. I couldn't really tell. There was one angle that seemed to show that, but it may have been a bit deceptive. But that certainly does happen sometimes, and batters don't always get called on it. But yeah, you know, velocity being what it is, I think many hitters prefer to move back a bit, which might suggest, you know, that if you were to move the mound back, but I won't return to that hobby horse, I guess. mounds back, but I won't return to that hobby horse, I guess. But people say like, if you move the mound farther from home plate, some people argue that that actually wouldn't help hitters because it would give more time for breaking balls to break. And so it would be harder to anticipate that break. But if batters are moving back on mass, just to deal with the velocity,

then that would suggest that they don't think that's the case, that they want the extra millisecond or fraction of a millisecond or whatever it is that they could gain by moving back a couple inches. Anyway, this will continue to happen at a higher rate, even if it's not so high a rate that we necessarily notice unless we're looking at stats like this, unless someone literally gets their arm broken like this, which hopefully won't keep happening. But it is a really interesting trend just because it kind of encompasses so many other developments in the game. And this is kind of a reflection of those things, why this is happening so much more. Yeah.

You know what is also happening much more? I learned this week, courtesy of Baseball Perspectives' Rob Means and Jarrett Seidler, I learned this week, courtesy of Baseball Perspectives' Rob Mainz and Jarrett Seidler, we're seeing many more pitchers get designated for assignment after one game, after one day, like being treated in an extremely disposable way. of documented the fact that players on the whole are just handled more disposably, fungibly these days. They come and go. On average, careers are shorter because there are just so many more major leaguers and they're constantly cycling on and off of rosters and they're being shuffled back and forth with AAA or between teams. And this year, this has reached a new height, seemingly, as Jarrett and Rob noted, as teams are trying to find their way around restrictions that are supposed to stop some of this constant shuffling.

And I have advocated and continue to advocate lowering the limit for pitchers on the active roster. pitchers on the active roster. Yet, if you were to do that, and I think MLB might, you have to kind of close these loopholes somehow because teams are finding ways around this. So, in response to having a 13-pitcher limit and a 15-day minimum for pitchers once they get sent down and five options per player per season. So you don't just have an unlimited number of times you can send guys down and call them up again. Now, it seems like the latest tactic for front offices in some cases is just to designate these guys for assignments and bring in someone new. And you might lose them.

You might run the risk of someone else claiming them. But if you do, it's not the end of the world for you because you can just call up some other fastball slider monster that every team has stashed at AAA. And you can just rotate through them constantly. And so that is happening more this year than it did even last year. According to Robin Jarrett, there were 27 pitchers designated for assignment in the first 32 days of the 2023 season. In the equivalent span of this season, first 32 days, there were 43 pitchers designated for assignment. And a lot of these of the 27 last year, seven involved a pitcher being added to the active roster, pitching one game or no games and getting DFA'd shortly thereafter, usually the next

day of the 43 this year, 12 have followed that sequence. So it's just a constant, just sort of musical chairs. And from the team perspective, yeah, there's a, you know, next man up kind of thing. But from the player perspective, you might be on the move. You might be out of a job. You might have to change teams, change cities, right? And from a fan perspective, you just don't know the names or faces of like pitchers who are pitching for your team, even if you're a pretty devoted fan. So I would love for MLB to find a way to crack down here and try to discourage this behavior because what they've done so far, you know, teams will always find a way around these things and then you have to counter them. You have to find a way to kind of close those loopholes.

Yeah. They take the approach to roster building that water takes to any container where it's going to find where the crack is and then push through it. I want their approach to these sorts of things to be two-pronged. Like one, I hope that they spend time, and I think that they do. I don't want to knock them too aggressively or unfairly here, but like, you there and think i'm a bad actor how am i going to use this role right like i or i'm an indifferent actor maybe that's a more accurate way to put it which doesn't excuse it as like crummy human behavior but i think probably encapsulates the motivation a little bit more where it's like, my goals are about innings filled in a day and I'm not really all that concerned with the human cost of this to these guys. Spend an afternoon thinking

about what that looks like. And then, you know, on the back end of it, you got to spend some time being like, okay, we have to close these loopholes and tighten this stuff up as we see it in process because the whole idea the intent the spirit behind let's limit the number of times a guy can be sent down and called up in a season was to improve quality of life for players right that it is you know it's it's disruptive and jarring and to go up and down and up and down and up and down and up and like that sucks you know and it diminishes the number of days that they can be on a big league roster, collecting a big league paycheck.

Like there are all of these negative knock-on effects to players when you have the ability to endlessly shuffle back and forth. And so with that as the obvious intent of this rule, this flies in the face of that intent. And so you got to nip it. You know, you got to nip it in the little bud. That's about gardening.

Did you know that? Buds, you know. Buds. Plants have them. Yeah. Not like people named bud. You don't want to nip them. They're people.

I was aware of that. You can't be biting them. You can't be biting buds. There is a similar pruning that's going on here that is not great, right? And you do run a risk of jettisoning someone that you might need that is actually good. And then it will come back to bite you. For instance, the article uses the Mets as an example. Not that they've done this the most egregiously necessarily, but it's just the example in here.

So in spring training, they had a battle for two open bullpen spots, initially one by Michael Tonkin and Johan Ramirez, both out-of-options journeyman types. They DFA'd Tonkin. Didn't we have a discussion about whether it should be DFA'd or DFA'd? D-F-A? I don't know. No, D-F-A, right? I hate that I even dredged that up again. Yeah, why would you do that?

They DFA'd Tonkin on April 5th for Tehran, then Ramirez went out for Cole Solser three days later. Since then, they've continued to cycle those roster spots nearly nonstop, spinning through Daniel Nunez twice, Tyler Jay, Grant Hartwig twice, Tonkin again off a waiver claim, Josh Walker, and most recently, Danny Young through the ensuing three weeks. Most of the time, the pitcher threw one game,

perhaps two, usually for multiple innings, and was sent down for another arm who could do the same without waiting out a full rest cycle. Some of those guys were just options. Some were designated for assignment. And so they say this has let the Mets operate with what is more like a 15-man pitching staff than a 13-man pitching staff,

since those last couple bullpen spots can be cycled out at will if a pitcher would ever be down the next day. since those last couple bullpen spots can be cycled out at will if a pitcher would ever be down the next day. And so they have had the pop-up helium reliever Reed Garrett, and so they have been wise enough to hold on to him. But they did lose Austin Adams, who lost out in the spring training battle, and he's gone to Oakland, and he's been quite effective for them, right? And wasn't he a minor league

free agent draft pick for someone? One of us? Not me, I think. Yeah. Anyway, someone's reaping the rewards of that. So you have to be- It might have been me. Was it me? Probably was you. So you have to be careful about evaluating those players lest you cast someone loose too quickly. But yeah. Right. Much like the minor league free agent draft. Yes. Let's tighten that up. I did take Austin Adams. Man, good for me.

Good for the ace. Good for Meg's minor league free agent draft team. And I meant to say this because I'm sure someone would ask if we didn't address it. When talking about the catcher's interference increase. One way that that could be curbed and could reverse itself is if we did get full ABS, if we got robo-umps, because we got a question from Matthew, Patreon supporter, who said, if a full ABS system were implemented, where and how should catchers set up? What becomes top priority?

Blocking, throwing, setting a target, being ready for pop-ups, ground balls, or something else. And look, I don't think they would like set up way back of the plate even if they didn't have to worry about framing or receiving anymore the way that catchers used to in the early days before they had protective gear or the way that kids might or something. I think they'd still want to squat probably and kind of be back there because, A, yeah, you have to worry about blocking. You want to be as close as possible to deal with the running game, which is quite important. That could be another factor potentially behind catchers moving up. Guys are running wild these days. You want to cut down on the time it takes you to get that ball to second base. ball to second base. So all that stuff, plus presenting a target for the pitcher, which,

you know, these days a lot of teams are just like, put it over the middle of the plates and they'll throw strikes and let the movement and velocity take care of it. But still a lot of catchers actually present targets where they want the ball to go. So I think they'd still be up there, but maybe they wouldn't be quite up in the batter's grill to the extent that they are now if they didn't have to worry about reaching out at least right they could wait and you know just wait to block and throw and be in a position to do that but not have to extend their arm way out the way Wilson Couturis was there if it didn't really matter how they received the pitch so I guess that would be one way to bring the catcher's interference totals down. But it's not such a problem that I would want to do that for that

reason. Right. Yeah. I mean, and I don't want us to sound cold or indifferent to a guy literally breaking his arm. That's bad. But I agree with you that it is, again and just in terms of the raw number of pitches that gets thrown every day, it isn't happening as often as this dramatic uptick might suggest. So, yeah. Are you familiar with the term endling, a noun, an endling? Is it a video game thing? No, it sounds like it is. Doesn't it sound like a video game thing? It does, but no, that's not what I'm thinking of.

No, I am not. What is an endling? You know, there's a game called Endling. Extinction is forever that came out a couple of years ago. So it is a game. But also it's a term that has always sort of spoken to me. I find it very evocative. always sort of spoken to me. I find it very evocative. It is a term applied to the last living member of a species or subspecies. So when a species goes extinct, someone,

some member of that species has to be the last, right? Like there had to be a last dodo bird, a last passenger pigeon, you know. In fact, there was the last passenger pigeon at least known was named Martha. And she died at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1st, 1914. RIP Martha and RIP passenger pigeons, right? So I've always thought like, gosh, that's such a sad idea. Yeah. Imagine being the last of your species. Granted, most of the endlings, I guess, would not have been aware of the significance of their endling nature.

They would not have known that they were the last of the species, although. They were probably lonely. They were probably on some level lonely. They were probably like, hey, it'd be nice to mate with someone. Yeah. But no options. You know, dating is hard these days, right? So that occurs to me now because we have a fightin' necklace endling.

That's right, we do. Yeah. This is the term that stood out to me when I read a story about Chase Anderson still sporting the fightin' necklace. I feel like I made a reference to fightin' necklaces recently on the podcast. Every now and then I bring it up because it was such a weird fad, the fightin' necklace, that promised whatever. Like, you know, magnets and blood flow and energy. Balance or something. Yeah.

You know, a bunch of sort of snake oil stuff, right? But it became maybe part snake oil that a bunch of players bought into or were just like, well, can't hurt, I guess, might as well. But also like part fashion statement, part just like conformist fad, you know, everyone else was wearing one. They were probably just giving them away. So sure, why not? And for a while there, everyone was was wearing one. They were probably just giving them away. So, sure, why not? And for a while there, everyone was wearing fightin' necklaces. And then they just disappeared seemingly. It's another thing Sam wrote about that he had toyed with trying to determine who was the last player to sport a fightin' necklace.

Well, it turns out that potentially the last is still with us. Still walking among us, still pitching. Chase Anderson still wearing the fightin' necklace, which I did not know until Rob Redford just wrote about this last week for WEI. So Chase Anderson is 36 years old, and he's pitching for the Red Sox these days. years old and he's pitching for the Red Sox these days. And he sort of emulated the Red Sox when he came up, like he thought it was cool that all the Josh Beckett and, you know, all those guys back then were wearing like the camo fight necklaces specifically. And he's been wearing this thing since I think 2010 when he put the necklace on in low A and he threw a complete game shutout and he was, you know, in the way that baseball players are sort of superstitious. He liked it, because he's from Texas and there were a bunch of Texans on those Red Sox teams, Beckett and

Buchholz and Lackey. And so he liked the look and then it worked the one time he put it on and he has not taken it off since. I mean, he probably takes it off sometimes. He doesn't like sleep in it and shower in it. But when he's on the field, he's been wearing the same necklace. Not even like just any old fight necklace. Fight necklace but me. Yeah. It's been with him all these years.

And he's still repping fighting, which is is like, I guess, still a company. Like, they're still out there. They're just not really a big baseball presence these days. So, even though I'm not inclined to, like, nonsense scientific claims, you know, if people really buy into them and if they do any harm, which I guess these necklaces didn't, but they were just, you know, sort of extraneous. Yeah. But now I am almost like fond of it. It's like, oh, yeah, it evokes an era of baseball.

It's like you watch baseball from that era, you're going to see a lot of fighting necklaces. And so it's sort of sad because it's like Chase Anderson may be the endling of the fighting necklaces. Maybe he's the only one. Chase Anderson may be the endling of the fight necklaces. Maybe he's the only one. But then again, maybe not. Because, you know, unlike with a species, like someone else could put on the necklace and then Chase Anderson wouldn't be the endling anymore. So maybe someone will see Chase Anderson doing it and will say, hey, that looks kind of good.

I'd like there to be like one designated fight wearer just to kind of keep it alive forever. Just one guy, you know, I don't want it to catch on big time again necessarily, but you know, it's an anachronism. I like it. I'm kind of, it's circled all the way back to like, this tickles me now. I'm really sad now thinking about like the last dodo bird. It's the saddest thing. It really is. It's so sad. Did you hear about the zebras that got out in north bend washington did you hear about this apparently there were every every i'm gonna you know you you've brought us i'm gonna say it ben you brought us low and so i'm gonna pick

everybody back up and i'm gonna start by uh spoiling the story and saying that all the zebras are fine um and obviously there are a lot of zebras out in the world i think they're you know they're doing okay as a species maybe i don't know but i guess there was like a trailer of zebras they were being transported to a petting zoo and the maybe there was something wrong with the the rig uh that they were in and so the guy uh transporting them pulled over and they they got out they they burst out loose and um they were uh this is like local news you know just like man of heaven right and um and i was watching the footage of it and i was like oh my god that's the exit that's like by my best friend's house and so i texted her and i was like did you guys have zebras in north bed today she's like we did

but we didn't get to see them well they they recaptured three of the four but for like a week and a half one of these zebras was just wandering through like the greater snookwamee area in and people were like seeing it you know and it was a great story because like how what in the world you It's the Pacific Northwest, famously not native territory for zebras. They are not a native species to the Northwest. And people were excited, and I got that. But I was like, but isn't he lonely? I don't know what the sex of the zebra was, but I think it was a male zebra.

I was like, well, isn't he lonely out there? And then I guess the zebra maybe made a friend of a horse, and then they were able to get it back. And now it's on its way. I don't know if being in a petting zoo is a better fate than wandering, you know, like around North Bend alone, but. Better than being extinct, at least. by a car or, you know, I was very worried about this zebra and now it's doing okay. I was like, isn't it lonely? Like they're herd animals, you know, they're, I don't think they're solitary. Yeah. Anyway.

Wow. Say something happy, Ben. You really brought me down. I know. It really, every time I read it, like it makes me emotional. Like, and because the Wikipedia page has pictures of the endlings of a few, you know, like the Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise. Lonesome George? Lonesome George, yeah. You're making me cry.

I know. And I can't tell if Lonesome George is actually lonesome or sad about being an endling in this photo. He just kind of looks like a tortoise to me. But it makes me sad to think of him just being the last of his kind. You know what? I was, when I was reading Andy's book and I was reading the part about 2020, it made me very emotional. I got like kind of worked up about it in a way that I'm going to say this and people

will be like, why is she bringing that up? And then you're going to listen to our interview and you're going to go, oh, I was like, do I need to go back to therapy? 2020, like I'm having a bigger reaction to this than I was expecting. And like Andy's a very good writer, but it wasn't that I was like so moved by the prose. Yeah. Which was good. But again, I was like, I'm ready to cry in this coffee shop.

Well, the last thing that I want to bring up might not buck you up, but maybe it'll fire you up. I don't know. That's sometimes just as good. But there were two stories about somewhat exploitative behavior of amateur ballplayers that just came out. So one, which was published at The Athletic. which was published at The Athletic. This one was about Perfect Game and Fanatics seemingly striking a deal as if there needed to be one more thing for people to be up in arms about Fanatics about. But Perfect Game, which is itself just a very much a kind of cottage industry of like youth baseball tournaments and scouting services. And, you know, one of the

drivers of just how expensive amateur baseball is these days and the showcase circuit and travel ball and just having to pay just through the nose to get seen and play on those teams. And then the injuries of throwing for scouts and that whole problematic organization and structure of youth ball these days. But they are expected to officially agree soon, reportedly, on a multi-year memorabilia deal with Fanatics. And the deal here basically is that anyone who wants to play at a perfect game event, which a lot of players kind of have to or certainly have a strong incentive to

if they want to be prospects or they want to get scouted and signed and seen. They have to, seemingly have to, it's not clear if there's any way out of this, but one of the conditions is that they have to sign away their NIL rights, basically, their name, image, and likeness rights to participate in the tournaments so that Fanatics then has them locked up to make cards and collectibles and other memorabilia and autographs and everything of these perfect game athletes, like, at any point in the future you know when they became big stars fanatics would still be sitting on a stockpile of these autographs that they could then auction off and agents are upset about it scott boris is quoted in this piece uh saying that uh this is profit taking and they've warned their clients and players not to sign away your rights for cards. This should not be the design of the perfect game platform. If they demand that, I wouldn't recommend student-athletes give away those rights. Why would they?

Well, it seems like they don't have a whole lot of choice here, right? And the other thing is that in many cases, like, these players don't really have agents. I mean, they're not allowed to, right? They can have advisors, which is sort of similar. But they might not have representation and they might not understand what they're signing up for or their families might not. There's another agent here who says it's unethical and borderline illegal. They know that and they're still doing it. There should be a class action lawsuit against Perfect Game by the parents.

This does not sound like a good thing. It's already just such an imposition to have to go through all this rigmarole if you want to get signed that forces some players who come from less economically advantaged backgrounds out of the whole pipeline as it is. And so to deprive those players of this source of revenue really for potentially years to come just seems like this shouldn't be part of the deal. I mean, it's like when, you know, a party in Congress tries to like attach something to a bill that has nothing to do with the thing that they're trying to cram in, right? But they are

going to get that thing passed and they're just just gonna stick that thing in come hell or high water and it might scuttle the whole thing this is sort of similar it's like well we we got them where we want them like they have to play in these tournaments and so might as well not only like charge them a bunch to take part in these tournaments but then also make tons of money off their potential future fame. Yeah, it's pretty gross. I don't really think there's another way to describe it. And I think that there's a lot of attention paid, and I appreciate why, and I can sympathize with the balance here. But we spend a lot of time thinking about the ways in which the international amateur

market is exploitative, but we're exploiting kids right here at home, you know, and there's a media presence aspect to participating in these showcases. And I can appreciate needing, you know, a release for your, you know, for future promotional materials for PG or whatever. Like, you know, I think that there's a version of this that isn't icky, but the idea that you would be able to continue to make money on it, particularly when you think about how early in the process of a player going from being a highly regarded amateur to a professional, the memorabilia and card collecting crew descend on these kids. Like, it's not as if

you have to wait until, you know, they're about to make their major league debut for there to be real money being made on cards and jerseys and, you know, bits of bats and all of that stuff. So very early in the process, they become sources of revenue generation. And so the idea that you would try to further divert some of that money away from the kid whose talent is what makes their card remotely appealing to anyone, it's just, it's gross. And you Like they, they go to parents and they say, you know, participating in these showcases is an important step in your son being considered by major league teams. And like, that isn't untrue. You know, there is a tremendous amount of efficiency that get of being able to be in front of scouts from all across the major league firmament.

And there are college coaches and staffs that go to those things. And there are kids who get scholarships on the back of that. So it's not that that's the only way that you can get scouted and seen, but it's a pretty important one. And for there to be further monetary extraction in a process that is already like, you know, filled up to the brim with that is just icky. to teams and the key section ESPN says, it has come to our attention that clubs have been encouraging amateur players in the United States to withdraw from or otherwise refrain from playing high school baseball in the United States and or Canada in order to try to establish residency in a foreign country in an effort to make themselves eligible to sign under the international amateur talent system instead of the rule for

draft. Now, MLB is probably trying to crack down on this in part because MLB likes the draft because it suppresses salaries and bonuses, etc. And this is sort of a way to skirt that somewhat, or at least for some teams to try to get players that they might not otherwise be able to get because the draft order determines who can sign whom to some extent, right? It used to be, though, that in the draft, you could blow someone away with a big bonus. And now you can't do that because it's like hard slotting, right? And similarly for international free agents, you can't just spend whatever you want for them either. There are also rules and bonus pools and limitations there. So it's not like anyone's going to be blowing anyone away, but teams could

offer something like they could try to persuade a player to sign with them that they wouldn't have a chance to draft just because they're not picking high, right? If it's some successful team and a player wouldn't still be on the board when this team would be drafting, but if the player's not draft eligible because they left the country to go establish residency somewhere else so that they will come into professional baseball, not through the amateur draft, but through the international amateur talent system, then that team could potentially offer a little more subject to the restrictions of the bonus pool but could say like, oh, we're a winning team or we have high payrolls or we offer some other geographic advantage or whatever it is.

And you can trade for pool space and there is some amount of flexibility there, although you're limited in what percentage of your existing pool you're able to trade for and stuff like that. that you are encouraging a young player to, I don't want to say like drop out of school, but I mean, maybe, kind of. Presumably they'd still be getting some sort of schooling, hopefully somewhere, you know, but still to uproot yourself at that point, that's a pretty significant thing to do, even if it didn't hurt you academically, educationally. And I guess it could work out for the player in the long run

in the sense that they would then control their own destiny and would be able to choose a team to sign with instead of just being subject to the draft. So it's sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. So I don't know if this is as exploitative as the perfect game fanatics thing that we were just talking about because this at least like gives the player some control that they might not otherwise have but it also sort of

pressures them to do something that most high school kids are not like you know what what if i didn't play on my high school team what if i left the country entirely you know know? So, I mean, look, pro sports, pro athletes, it's a weird existence and vocation. I know that. However you enter into this world, it's going to be weird. But I can see why MLB would want a crackdown on this. It also seems like it might be for the best if there were a crackdown, at least in some respects. It sounds more like the behavior of an agent than of a team from an incentive perspective, right? Where, you know, you, if you're a major league club, like sure there is the ability to, you know, potentially get at a player who you would otherwise not be able to because of how your bonus pool is allocated and where you pick but also you want

these guys to go through the draft if you're a big league team because you have then you can just pay them their bonus and be on their way you you don't want to introduce agency into the process for it'll be interesting to see like the demographic of player that this would apply to seems like it would be very limited to me because to move to another country like that requires resources, you know, and it's profoundly disruptive. Like who's going to be able to even do this? And, you know, I know that the talks around an international draft is sort of stalled of late, but like i imagine that eventually that will come to fruition and so how many more bites of the apple do you even have for something like this before there's just an international draft and then like what possible incentive do you have if you're

you know a domestic amateur to do something like that particularly because and granted this might change because it was a major sticking point between the union and the league but like the the caps and bonus pool amounts like the the caps and bonus pool amounts in the international draft at least as they were initially proposed by major league baseball were lower than they were for domestic amateurs because they can sign younger was the justification we don't have to like crack that nut today but you know that was a big sticking point that the union wouldn't move off on which is part of why they weren't able to get a draft implemented by the deadline. It's not really a new CBA anymore, is it?

No. We're well on our way to the next one. Brace yourselves. Get psyched for the next round. I should go back to therapy before that. Before that. Be better equipped. But yeah, it's an interesting question. Like who

would be the target player pool for something like this? Because I don't know how feasible it would really be for most kids and their families. I say kids. I mean, like there's like a weird, it's such a weird, weird Ben, you know, it's like, it's weird. It is. Who can imagine making major life-changing decisions like this when you're that age? Most of us, I mean, we do have to make some, but maybe not quite that momentous. Yeah, definitely not. I mean, again, it depends on the person, but at least for me, it was more like, where do I go to school? That was my, and I just got to, I got to pick, not like anywhere, but like everywhere I got in, I was like, hmm, do I want to go there?

You didn't have to get drafted by Bryn Mawr. I didn't. You decided you wanted to go there. I did. I did. Sight unseen, you know, I didn't tour, but it worked out. Same for me in Georgetown. Just showed up, freshman orientation, never set foot at the place before.

My mom was like, I hope this works. Yeah. I don't know if that was the right decision for me, but you know what? I think it worked out fine. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Good.

I'm glad. I got into University of Chicago. I think I might have been a better fit there. But you know what? Don't think I would undo it because who knows what sort of butterfly effect that would be. Exactly. This is always the thing. It's like, you know, could I have gone to the University of Washington for free and

not had any debt when I graduated? Yeah. But like, I like my life now. So would it be the same? Probably not, you know? Yeah. But we'll never know how much better it might have been. So it doesn't have to torment us.

Or how much worse. That's the positive way to look at it since I'm trying to cheer you up here. Yeah, geez. Not very well. Yeah, okay. Also, while we were talking, speaking of downer stories, Ipe Mizuhara pled guilty to bank fraud and subscribing to a false tax return, which is like if you steal millions of dollars, I guess you're obligated to report that you did that. It is kind of the funny thing about it, isn't it? Yeah. And he did not disclose that he stole many millions of dollars.

And so that's getting him in trouble, too, in addition to actually stealing the many millions of dollars. But yeah, this is not unexpected. And the bank fraud charge has a maximum of 30 years in federal prison and then additional years for the false tax return. He's not going to serve anything close to that because he is completely cooperated once he was caught and he's copped to it and is admitting responsibility and everything. And so the reports are saying it might be more like 78 to 97 months, which we're still talking several years here. So, you know, saves a lot on that sentence, but it's still daunting. And, you know, I guess as deserved as these things ever are by the letter of the law. But look, we've talked about that and how he brought this on himself

and yet it's hard not to feel bad for him getting himself into the situation where he did this. Anyway, that's the next step in this process. So that happened. By the way, I meant to say Shohei Otani, despite Muki being as good at shortstop as he's been, Shohei Otani's 0.3 war behind Mookie,

which as we established, you know, doesn't really mean that much at this point in the season. And yet, do I check the fan crafts combined war leaderboard every day? By habit, out of habit, I check the combined one,

which I always look at because Otani, you know, you got to put the pitching war and the hitting war together. This year, you don't. And yet, I still look at that leaderboard. But he's so close because he's absolutely, he's raking. He's just absolutely raking. Yep.

And the fact that he's raking, I've already seen some straight comments here and there like, you know, maybe they shouldn't even have him pitch again. Do we need to do this every time? It's such a delicate balance. Whenever he excels at one or the other or looks bad doing one or the other or gets hurt for a little while, we have to have the whole conversation over again. Let the man pitch and hit as long as he can. If he gets hurt again pitching, he can just keep DHing and being the best hitter at baseball, right? So, do we have to, you know, eventually circumstances and human frailty will conspire to stop two-way Otani. That day is coming, but we don't have to hasten that day, right? Just enjoy it as long as it lasts. I want you to know that the thought occurred to me earlier this week to like make you have this conversation. I was like, should I be mean to Ben and make, and then I decided not to.

And then you were like, you know how everything dies and some things die alone and really sad. So I might have regret for being as nice to you as I was. Endlings. I know. I'm sorry for putting that into your brain forever. I gotta like endlings. I know. I'm sorry for putting that into your brain forever. I've got to finish editing an Angels list and I'm going to struggle

because that's sad. It is kind of incredible that he is the best hitter in baseball. I guess he still doesn't project as the best hitter in baseball quite, but he's getting close. He's getting close to just projecting as the best hitter in baseball. He's been the best hitter in baseball this year and probably last year if you fold that in too.

So, man, he's pretty unbelievable. He might actually make a run at that MVP awards that I kind of doubted he could do as a DH only. Anyway. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. What a, I mean, so he, wow. He really has been something, though. It's kind of incredible. Yep. It's pretty amazing. The baseball savant percentiles for him, it's beautiful. It's just a sea of red.

It's just everything is 100 or 99, at least all the contact quality stuff. It's just everything is 100 or 99, at least all the contact quality stuff. Not the like chase and whiff stuff, but all the like, does he hit the ball really well and on the screws and hard? Yeah. Yeah, he does like better than anyone else. And when I went to Baseball Savant and I put in his name or I clicked into the search bar, the top four trending players right now at Baseball Savant are Shohei Otani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who had another good outing, Shota Imanaga, and Jung-Hoo Lee. It's just all four, just the Asian sensations right now at the top of the Baseball Savant. And I went to see if that was also true at Fangraphs with the trending players. Shohei on top, Yamamoto second, Imanaga third.

However, Jung-Hoo Lee fifthamoto second, Imanaga third. However, Jung-Hoo Lee fifth, and fourth, Johnny DeLuca. Johnny DeLuca! Who had a walk-off triple and is off to a fine start with the race. Former Dodger, but yeah, he's screwing up the streak there. Wow, does Jerickson

Proffa really have a 179 WRC plus? He sure does, Meg. He sure does. He may be playing slightly above his head, one might say, if you look at his Babbitt, but he's hit the ball harder, too. Whatever. Yeah. Wow. That's something.

That's great. So we got to talk to Andy about Ben Kershaw. We don't got to. We chose to. We want to. We get to. Yeah. And to segue into that segment, I will read you one passage.

This is, as you know, a deeply, deeply reported book, but not at all a ponderous read. It's a page turner too. Yeah, I blitzed through it. Yeah. And it's not like there's, you know, tons of like newsy stuff exactly that you'd be like getting a notification about, but there's a lot of behind the scenes like hot goss here and like how things went down and conversations and clubhouse acrimony and lots of just interesting stuff. Obviously covers the Dodgers and Dave Roberts's October travails in depth.

And here's this one passage, which is about 2017 World Series Game 5, the notorious game when somewhat suspiciously no Astros were whiffing on Clayton Kershaw's pitches. Yeah. It has not been proven conclusively that they were doing the banging scheme in that game, but the Dodgers certainly believe that they were. And you know how I'm semi-obsessed with what Joe Girardi referred to as just strategy. Yes. The mid-plate appearance pitching change. Yes. And how I've said that, you know, teams maybe should be doing this more often.

If they did do it more often, it would probably be bad and a scourge upon the game and everything. Yes. Maybe it's also harder to do now with the three batter minimum quite as often. But it's an intriguing tactic to me that has been used much more often in college baseball. Another reason why I should probably be watching much more college baseball. Yes, Ben.

But in this situation, so remember the Dodgers got off to a big lead and then Uli Gurriel tied the game with a big home run. And then Cody Bellinger came out and hit a three-run homer to give the Dodgers and Kershaw a 7-4 lead. And then Kershaw comes back out again. He always comes back out again. And he got two outs, and he was about to turn the game over to the bullpen, but he could not put away George Springer. And here I'm reading from Andy McCullough, who says, except Kershaw could not put away Springer. His patsy only a

few days earlier. Springer ignored off-speed pitches that dipped beneath the zone. He spoiled an inside fastball. He fouled off a rare backdoor slider. After eight pitches, Springer walked. Up next was Alex Bregman, Houston's irrepressibly confident third baseman. He wore the number two in part because he was chosen second overall in the 2015 draft, and he was salty he wasn't taken first. He presented enough of a threat that when Kershaw snuck a curveball over the plate for a second strike, Roberts pondered an audacious act. He considered removing Kershaw and replacing him with Quinta Maeda in the middle of the at-bat.

I'm going to take him out right now, Roberts thought. He saw how fatigued Kershaw was, the combination of physical and emotional exhaustion that A.J. Ellis had seen in those games against St. Louis. Sweat ringed Kershaw's eyes and dirt dusted his cap. When Bregman stepped out of the box, Roberts raced through the variables, the value of a fresh reliever versus a weary starter, the potential calamity awaiting when he went to get the ball, the inevitable post-game circus, the concern about embarrassing the greatest pitcher of a generation. Roberts had spent the past two seasons trying to earn Kershaw's trust to the point where he hoped his ace understood the manager intervened only when he felt the Dodgers would benefit,

but he could not do it. He stayed put. I didn't want to make it about me, Roberts later said. And so Kershaw threw 10 pitches to Bregman, who kept taking balls and fouling off pitches. And ultimately, he walked, and there were two men on. And that's when Roberts came out to get Kershaw. Roberts came out to get Kershaw. And that is when the big blow was struck when Altuve hit the three run homer off of Maeda. So if Roberts had had the courage of his conviction, if he had made it about him and me, the person who's interested in seeing more mid-play appearance pitching changes, who knows how history, the course of history could have changed. Maybe he would have put in the fresh pitcher with two strikes ahead in the count, one strike away. And Bregman would have been so phased by the new pitcher and the new release point and everything that he would have struck out.

And they would have been out of that little jam. And the Dodgers would have cruised to a victory in 2017. And the Astros never would have won that World Series. The notorious title that they still hold. Everything could have been different potentially if Dave Roberts had made the mid-plate appearance pitching change. Or Clayton Kershaw might have popped him in the jaw. That almost certainly would have happened. Yeah, it would have been bedlam.

Can you imagine? And like, I know that it is an at times uneasy relationship between those two, but can you imagine how fractured it would have been? Regardless of the outcome, like, I don't know, man. I don't know. But what a what if. Yeah, it seems like I know he's making it about not making it about himself, but I think that's as much about self-preservation as it is anything else. Well, that's the kind of great anecdote you will get from the last of his kind.

We will talk about many more with Andy McCullough of The Athletic and the Roundtable podcast on The Athletic's Wind Up podcast feed in just a moment. If you're lucky, we'll cold call by chance. You never know precisely where it's going to go. By definition, effectively wild. Well, on Tuesday, a rehabbing Clayton Kershaw threw in the pen. The Athletics' Andy McCullough, I hope, picked up a pen to autograph a copy of his brand new book about Kershaw, The Last of His Kind, Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness. Andy, I hope the burden of having written a great book isn't too heavy for you. Yeah, I hope to someday experience that burden. That would be cool.

Yeah, that cycle for you between columns, you know? Yeah, yeah. Someday someone will write that about me, except for it's just how I handled writing game stories. That would be really great. Yeah. You're a throwback in some ways. You could be the last of your kind, maybe. Yeah, no.

I definitely excel at a form of content creation that is obsolete, game stories. And books. Not obsolete. I really like this one, and we hope that people will also read it. Prove Ben wrong, or prove him right, I don't know. Yeah. Well, my first question was going to be, how many people did you ask about Clayton Kershaw for this book? But you basically answered that in the acknowledgements, which we read, because we read all the way to the very end, which noted that you talked to 215

people for the book. So, did you ever get sick of calling people Clayton Kershaw played with in high school or A-ball and saying, tell me about Clayton Kershaw? No, I mean, I really did enjoy the process. I will say that when this whole thing wraps up, it will be nice to spend a day not thinking about him in some form or fashion, which I know, as he and I have discussed before, it's kind of a weird sort of situation. But yeah, I mean, I really like I found the process of doing this book to just be like more fun, more rewarding than anything I've had a chance to do in my career. And I've had I've been really lucky to do in my career. And I've had, I've been really lucky to like write about baseball for 15 years now. I, when I was beat writer, I've covered some great teams, you know, I do, you know, fun work at the athletic, but this was just, yeah, I never got sick of it. I loved writing it. The whole thing was just like, there

were some, you know, bumps along the way, but you know, I, I just found that there were people who wanted to talk about him, you know, whether they played with him for a little while, for a long time, whether they'd been, you know, a rival, someone they'd watched from afar, you know, like younger players, like were really like amped up to talk about him. And there wasn't even, you know, not a lot of that even made it into the book because it just didn't make total sense. But there, I just had lots of conversations with just, you know, like Sandy Alcantara, Shane McClanahan, you know, this kind of like different generation of pitchers asking them about their interactions with Kershaw or their experiences watching him.

And I just found it to be, you know, it was a rich subject, if that makes sense. That's good because a lot of people talk about writing a book the way that Clayton Kershaw talks about pitching, which is like, I love it, but it made me miserable almost the entire time. Yeah, I don't know what your experiences have been like doing this, but I just, I really, I liked it. It was fun. Well, of those 215 people, maybe the most important, certainly one of the most important was Clayton Kershaw himself. And you actually did get to talk to him quite a bit. It seems like you have a better rapport with Kershaw himself, and you actually did get to talk to him quite a bit. It seems like you have a better rapport with Kershaw than Dave Roberts does after reading the book, though I guess you've

never tried to take Kershaw out of a game, so maybe that hasn't strained your relationship. I also haven't been forced to talk about his injuries for the better part of a decade, too, which I think would challenge anyone's relationship. Robert says in your book he just doesn't let people get close to him, which might be more of a Dave problem to some extent. Clearly, some people are close to Clayton Kershaw. But obviously, there is something to that. And Clayton Kershaw acknowledges that himself.

Like, he doesn't open up. He has trouble talking about himself. And yet, he talked to you about himself, however reluctantly. And he let you into his training sessions and his house more than once. He didn't even think better of it after the first time. You must have really behaved yourself. So he's so private. How did he feel about the fact that you were writing a book about him?

And how did you convince him to open up to the extent that he did? Yeah. I mean, I think it's been – I think, you know, he could speak to this better, obviously, but my, my understanding and just talking to him in the last few weeks or so as the thing gets closer to becoming a reality, I think it's just kind of odd, you know, um, for him. I think he, the idea of reading a 400 page book about yourself seems pretty, um, preposterous to him and not something he really wants to endeavor in, which I think is understandable. I can't imagine anyone ever writing a 400-page book about me, but that would probably be a strange paradigm. But he was pretty open to the idea. I think that he understands

his place within the baseball landscape. He understands that, I mean, this is a person who's friends with Sandy Koufax, like actually friends with Sandy Koufax. He understands that being, you know, the greatest Dodger ever essentially is a sort of has a responsibility to it. And part of that is that, you know, as I explained to him, you know, several times, like, look, man, someone is going to write a book about you someday. And I think I'm the person to do it. And here's why. And, you know, I think the book would be better if you participated. And he was like, he got it. There wasn't, you know, we talked for maybe like when I first went and approached him in May of 2022, we talked for maybe five, 10 minutes about it, you know, and he was just kind of like, yeah,

that's, that's, I'm flattered. You know, like that's, that makes sense. Like, let me check with my wife, Ellen. And, you know, Ben, we made plans to talk that winter and I don't think he totally understood how intensive it was going to be. And I tried to make it, you know, not like I was bothering him every day. You know, I wouldn't, you know, we would go, you know, months without like interacting, but you know, he was very, he and his wife, Ellen, were incredibly generous with their time, with their candor. And I think the book is just so much better because of that. I mean, I think, you know, I wanted, I was going to write this, I was going to try to write it at the very least, whether or not he participated. But I think it's just a much better book because his voice is so prominent in there. Yeah, I was gonna ask, because I tend to, this genre of sports book, right,

the deep dive on a single player or a single team doesn't tend to be one that I gravitate toward for whatever reason. And I think, you know, I really loved this book. And a big part of why was that you were able to, you know, pull out some pretty interesting themes about him as a person that I will never know what it's like to pitch like Clayton Kershaw, but I know what it's like to enjoy being on a plane because I can't be reached. I was like, Clayton Kershaw, he's just like me, like being up in the air. It's like free time. It's international waters. No one can bother me up there.

And I think that there are parts of his personhood that we get glimpses of, right? The failures and struggles in October that I imagine were obvious potential avenues of exploration for you and others that I suspect emerged through the course of reporting. So, you know, when did you start to identify not only October, but, you know, the experience he had as a kid growing up with an increasingly absent father, you know, the struggle and trauma that that brought? How did Kershaw, the person of it all, start to unfold for you? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's the sort of thing that if you are having been around him as a beat writer, you know, I covered the team for the times for the LA times for, um, for several years. And so I wrote about him a lot. And so, you know, I had to think about him as a person and, you know, I, I sort of saw him as a, um, historically important character, you know, during that time. And I wanted to do the best I could to like

chronicle that in the newspaper. And so you start to think about like, okay, like, why are you like this? Like, why are you so regimented? Why are you obsessed with time and control? You know, why are you like incapable of changing your schedule? You know, why are you like jokingly, but not jokingly saying you're going to punch Kenley Jansen in the face for, you know, changing a meeting time, you kind of got to dig in. And like, it's, you know, a fairly simple thing for a therapist to do, but I athletes kind of don't go through this sort of investigation of it. and feeling the anxiety of not knowing if he was going to get to his practices on time and things like that. Not knowing if he'd be able to do what he needed to do, that sort of stuff. And you can see it as he grows older that he's trying to control time. those older that he's, you know, trying to control time. You know, this is a guy who like,

when he was a kid would like beg his mom to take him to baseball games, you know, two or three hours early. So he knew he wouldn't be late. And so, yeah, trying to tap into that, you know, talking about his relationship with his parents. Um, obviously, you know, it's not a secret, you know, that, you know, Molly Knight wrote a decent amount about this, um, in her, you know, excellent book about the sort of the opening years of the Guggenheim Dodgers about, you know, his dad's absence sort of shaping him. And so I wanted to try as best I could to, you know, drill into that. And also, too, you know, that book was written like 10 years ago, you know, he's a father now and get into, okay, so like, why, you know, the way he parents, which he's like very invested in what his kids are up to, even when he's, you know, far away from him, that it's kind of the

central dilemma in his life is that he can't be with his, you know, his profession and his family are not located in the same place all the time. You know, how does that relate to how he grew up? And I asked him at one point, you know, I was like, what did you learn about parenting from your dad? And the way he framed is like, I want to be a dad who is there for everything. And it's not hard to understand that a person who would say something like that is a kid who grew up with the opposite, if that makes sense. Yeah. You know, the joke about men will literally do X instead of going to therapy. At one point, this wasn't in the book because it didn't make sense, but at one point, I

was like, dude, you should go to therapy. Yeah. And he was like, ah, ha, ha. And I'm like, I'm in therapy. It's okay. Trust me. You can afford it. And he was like, ah, okay.

All right. Yeah. I'm glad you approached the subject. I mean, you know, maybe he'll get around to it one day the way it took him years to come around on throwing different pitches or going to driveline or whatever. But I was thinking that the entire time. Like, obviously, he's got a great support system and he's got close friends and he's got a great family, it seems like. But also, I was like, Clayton, have you tried therapy? He's just talking to someone about this stuff. Like, it might really help you. Yeah. I also think too, though, like, it's the sort of stuff, and I got into this a bit,

you know, in talking about his childhood. I think it's stuff that isn't, it's obviously shaped him, but the way he presents it is like, it's not stuff he spends a lot of time perseverating about, you know, like he, you know, the way he framed it is like his memories of even just, you know, sitting down with his parents to be told that they were going to get a divorce. I was like, so what did they say? And he was like, I don't really remember. And I'm like, okay. And he's like, I remember where the chairs were in the room, you know? And it's almost like that idea is that he, from this like, you know, obviously traumatic experience, what sticks with him is just an image rather than the dialogue or

rather than how he felt or any of that stuff. It provides a window into just how he processes stuff like that. You know, I joked to you that when I saw the book title, I was hoping it would be about Rich Hill. I even went so far as to send you a paint.net hastily made mock-up of the cover of your book with Rich Hill substituted for Kershaw, which you did not react to in any way whatsoever. However, one thing that Kershaw and Hill have in common, besides being lefties and former teammates, is that they're mostly easygoing guys who transform into absolute animals on their start days, or at least have for much of their career. And it just made me wonder, because Kershaw has mellowed to some extent, as you document, as he's gotten older and he has a family and everything else, like, could there have been

a Clayton Kershaw who was more measured in that way from the start? You know, it's like, it's almost obnoxious, like, the extent to which he took it at times. I mean, he, you know, he was, like, kind of rude and, like, you know, he was like kind of rude and like, you know, imposing his intensity on everyone around him, which like, hey, he's the ace, he's the best pitcher in baseball. Like, you know, you put up with that kind of thing, right? But like, I just wonder whether there was some way to achieve the excellence that he has in a more, I don't know, well-adjusted way, a way that wouldn't weigh on him as heavily or or whether like he's only as good as as he is because of that attitude well that's his the way he looks at it is like

there you can't you know they're inextricable they're they're they're just so closely linked i mean you know because we talked about this i was like i said something to the effect of like you know have you ever considered like just chilling out dude dude? And he kind of was like, do you think I like feeling like this? Do you think I want to do it? It's like, no, I hate this. I hate the way it makes me feel. But it is what I feel is necessary to be prepared to get on the mound and do what I believe is my you know, my job and to meet the standard that I have set for myself. And the way he frames it is like, he feels like if he doesn't do all the things that

are on his schedule that need to be done in the order that he believes they need to be done, then if something goes wrong on the mound that night, he will believe that is why that happened. And so he protects against that by basically just having this ironclad schedule that can't be deviated from. He's so good and so successful, and yet I kept being like, stop being so stubborn. Just throw the other kind of pitch. It'll be okay. You're really good. Fastball away. Fastball away. I'm not stubborn. I'm not. I don't want to skip to the end of his career because it's obviously still in progress. But, you know, reading this, thinking about the preparation,

the anxiety, the way it sort of twists him up. And then, you know, you had a couple of spots where you noted that he doesn't necessarily revel in the mentorship piece of it, right? He's not one of those vets who's there trying to help young guys adjust their grips or whatever. And so I'm curious, sort of, what do you think his life beyond baseball will be when his playing career comes to a close? Do you see him being someone who sort of like sticks around as a special assistant? Or do you think he's just going to be like, now I get to hang out with my kids and you know maybe go to therapy probably probably not the last part but i think that i think that it's going to be something of a challenge you know for him um

as it is for any elite athlete when you know they kind of have to you know stop playing i think that the idea of him being a special assistant or a coach or things like that seems pretty far-fetched. He just does not seem to have a ton of interest in that. He and his wife have discussed the idea of him being possibly a broadcaster. He does these in-game interviews with Joe Davis and Oral Hershiser on the Dodgers broadcast that are really interesting on the days when he's not pitching, obviously. But his insight into just the game. And there was a moment, I think it was last year,

where it was the second game of the season or something like that where Zach Davies was pitching. And it was the second inning, third inning, and he said something. He was like, oh, Davies is doing something different with his changeup this year. And Joe Davis was like, what? How do you know that? And he was like, I, Davies is doing something different with his changeup this year. And Joe Davis was like, what? What are you talking? Like, how do you know that? He's like, I don't know. I watch a lot of baseball. So he just, he has a very, so I think he could be good in that role, but I don't know how seriously, you know, he would approach it. But yeah, I mean, I think his primary thing is, you know, by the time his career wraps up in, you know, whether

it's the end of this year, next year, you year, maybe a year or two beyond that, his kids are going to be entering adolescence and becoming more and more real people. And so there will be a lot of responsibility there. But I think it's going to be a challenge in some ways just to manage what do you do, where do you put that energy now that you can't put it on, you know, the baseball field? And I think part of the reason why he's going to keep going at a time when his body, you know, might be suggesting that it would be okay to stop is that, you know, he doesn't want to have to make that choice just yet. Nobody would buy a book about a nobody, but do you think you could write just as good a book about many or most major leaguers

if the audience for it existed? Like, does Kershaw's excellence make him so uniquely interesting that he's a fitting subject for a book? Or does his excellence just merely make us notice the other ways in which he's interesting? And maybe every major leaguer has an amazing story to get to that point it's just that we're not paying as close attention i don't know i mean i feel like most major leaguers now they're their dads were big leaguers um no no um i i mean i think you can tell a compelling story about any player but i think the difference is that people care about this guy in the way that the average major leaguer, they just don't have that effect on the people they come across in everyday life. Not just fans, but just like their teammates,

their opponents, the people who write about the game, who think about the game. I mean, we care about him because he's been so great. And with a lot, a lot of players are dedicated, like everyone in the big leagues is working hard. Everyone in the big leagues, you know, overcame stuff along the way. Like it's not to suggest that he's a unique figure in that regard. I just think I personally, like what I am interested in is trying to figure out how players who reach a certain, you know, pinnacle or pantheon or whatever you want to describe it, like why they keep going as compared to, we see a lot of other players who, you know, get to that level and then fade away. And so the ones who are able to do it year after year after year, you know, what permits them to

do it and what does it take essentially, you know, like what, what is, what is like, what does it require? What are the costs, you know, what does it bring you to try and, you know, strive for that sort of greatness, I guess? Do you think you would have written the book and wanted to tell this story if playoff Clayton Kershaw were a merely unremarkable pitcher, if he were roughly as good as he is during the regular season and wasn't notable either way? Like, would there be an arc? Would there be conflict?

Would there be drama? Could you write a good book about him without that? I think you could, I think, but I think it would be, yeah. I mean, I'm not sure what it's like, wow, this is the best player ever. They just won seven world series, you know? So yeah, it would be like, it would be, you know, you can write a good book about Tom Brady, you know? So yeah, I think you, I think you could. However, like the, his narrative arc is so clear. And that was the thing that i feel like separates him in a variety of ways like i think he's different than you know scherzer and verlander but those three guys are like the clear like dudes of this generation you know they're the three best

pitchers and you can debate you know who's better or whatever for a while but of those three kershaw is the only one with a clear narrative arc. His quest to win a title became the central subject of so many Octobers. And part of it was because he had failed so spectacularly on that stage. And part of it was the obvious pain that he had gone through in trying to get to that point. And I think part of it also, too, is the way he never shied away from it. He never said, like, well, I'm pitching on short rest. Or it was like, oh, the baseballs are slippery.

Or said he was injured or things like that. I mean, I go back to that moment after he gives up those two just devastating home runs to the Nationals. And rather than talk about why he's pitching in relief in the first place, and this is 2019, like, rather than say, like, why am I in this game? We have a great bullpen. Or instead of saying, like, my shoulder really hurts. What he stood up there and said was everything people say about me in the postseason is true. And I think that his willingness to, you know, not shirk the responsibility of being a player as good as he is

is what makes him so compelling. And so charting a person with that sort of, you know, personality or character, however you want to frame it, as they go through this, you know, kind of eight-year crucible to try to finally win in 2020. I mean, I think that was the clear narrative arc that appealed to me in terms of, like, how to put a book together, you know? Like, I don't know what the narrative arc is for Scherzer or Verlander, you know? It's just not as obvious, if that makes sense. Well, he'll be the last of his kind last 300 winner 300 game winner for linder yes well and you know it's a narrative that it has an established arc but it continues i'm curious

like and maybe you don't want to answer this but you know last year famously postseason didn't go well for kershaw or the dodgers and you know'm curious, as you're sitting there watching him just get his clock cleaned by the Diamondbacks, are you happy because he continues the story? Are you grimacing for him? Like, I imagine that it's a different kind of writer to subject relationship when you have spent so much time with this guy, with his family, with the dudes in polos behind him when he's winning awards. What was that experience like for you, Andy, human person, as you're watching it? It was very strange. I mean, I was more aware of the problems with his shoulder, I guess, than was publicly available at that time. And I wasn't in a position where I was able to write it. And so it made, you know, trying to cover it kind of challenging because I was aware that he was

dealing with a, you know, torn capsule, as is clear in the book, you know, and so. Wow, this is going to be a Bob Woodward level Trump scandal. I guess, yeah, I guess. The Kershaw shoulder tapes. scandal. I guess. Yeah, I guess. The Kershaw shoulder tapes. Yeah, we had a conversation at one point that summer, where he was kind of being cagey about his injury. And I was like, dude, like, why don't you just say what you have? And I didn't know what he had at that point. He was like, I don't know. When you say torn capsule, people freak out. And I was like, you have a what? Proving his point. Yeah, he was just like, yeah, exactly. And I'm like, you have a what? Proving his point. Yeah. He was just like, yeah, exactly.

And I'm like, you have a what? You know? Yeah. So I think that it was strange for me just kind of being in this position where because, you know, I'd been presented information that, like, couldn't be, you know, published, like, in real time, but that would have access to later that, I mean, look, everyone knew his shoulder was hurt. Everyone knew he was banged up. No one watched that game

and was like, that guy, you know, what the heck? He's sitting 95. I mean, he was sitting 88 and, you know, he was so clearly physically compromised, but yeah, I mean, it was an odd, it was an odd experience because it happened so quickly and it was so devastating that yeah probably took me a few innings of just sitting there kind of a bit in shock to just try and like process it and you know I just didn't yeah I just didn't kind of know what to do with it and I know just like in talking to him you know in the subsequent days I mean he told his wife Ellen after that he was like I'm done I'm never pitching again. This is so stupid. Like, why would I keep doing this? And then the next day shows up to work and is running in the outfield.

You know, and so I just, yeah, I think it was given how sort of difficult last season was for him, you know, physically, emotionally, you know, the distance from his children, losing his mom, all that sort of stuff, and then seeing it end on that just sort of disastrous note that sort of dredges up all the, well, Kershaw in the playoffs type stuff that I think seasoned

observers of the game are kind of like, no, it's not exact. But you sound like, look, the book's not meant to defend him or absolve him in the postseason or any way, but there sound like, like, look, the book's not meant to like defend him or absolve him in the postseason or any way. Like, but there's, I think people who like really deeply care about baseball understand. It's like, well, there's like, you know, there's some nuance in here, you know, when you talk about the playoff stuff. But that was just such an obvious, like just battering that it was, it was, yeah, it was just a really weird experience for me. Yeah.

I have no personal insight into Clayton Kershaw. And yet watching that, I was like, he's not going to go out on that note. He's going to be like, you know, like whatever it takes. I mean, it wasn't clear where he would be pitching. And as you note, like that was really actually in some doubt, but I just couldn't imagine him walking away like that. And I guess he couldn't either to actually undertake the first surgery of his career. So I was going to ask you, I think you did a really nice job of recounting all of the playoff nightmares because sometimes like play-by-play in a baseball book can really be a slog.

Yeah, I tried to limit it. I tried my best. Yeah, you did. You did a great job, especially because, you know, we know what happens. We remember the outcomes, right? And yet each time I was almost experiencing it anew, I was like, oh, how's it going to go wrong this time? Oh, right. I remember I saw this game. It was a disaster. But, you know, and it was kind of nightmarish because it keeps repeating and repeating in that very nightmare way where you just can't escape something in an almost unreasonable

way. And you document all the ways that like he was pushed harder than anyone else would be pushed and he didn't get great bullpen support. And know he's pitching deep into the games and you know no one's giving him timely offensive support sometimes right like a lot of things were stacked against him and yet also he just didn't pitch up to his usual standards on the whole right certainly on individual days he absolutely did but on But on the whole, he hasn't. And so I wonder whether you think it is fair to call him unclutch. And I don't mean that in the sense that like he's scared out there, you know, which I think most people would assume that's what you mean. Like you're just nervous and you just fall apart or something. That's clearly not the case with him.

That's clearly not the case with him. but might still make the case that, yeah, he's not really able to at least raise his game in that situation the way that you would want. You know, the Ellis theory that, you know, AJ was kind of reluctant to get into, but, you know, decided to say was just that he felt that the way that Kershaw trained his body and his mind and spirit and all that stuff to be ready every fifth day during the regular season just gave him an edge that other players just were not capable of meeting him at that level of intensity. And in the postseason, though, everyone kind of is there.

And he felt like Kershaw sensed that and tried to up the ante almost on all of those things, on all of the sort of energy that he was doing it. It's just like in the red. Yeah, exactly. He's pushing it into the red. And when the seventh inning rolls around in the postseason, where normally he's cruising, you know, he's at whatever, 85 to 100 pitches, you know that he can keep going in the regular season.

In the postseason, he's experienced sort of a mental, physical, emotional sort of exhaustion that might not manifest necessarily in, you know, the velocity or things like that, but would make him a little bit less sharp and more prone to, you know, disaster, essentially. I think that that's a reasonable, you know, explanation for some of it. I also think too, like 2015, it was pretty good. It was two starts, you know, like Pedro Baez gave up a single to David Wright, two runs scored. And then, and you know, on short rest, a few days later, he threw like seven innings of one run ball and they beat the Mets. And then, you know, they forgot to cover third base and the Mets won. You know, the next year, he's pitching on short rest,

coming off a major back injury, coming on in relief on one day of rest. And he finally sort of conks out against the Cubs, you know, after in game six, after kind of crushing them in game two. The year after that's the Astros. Perhaps you've heard what was going on in that World Series, right?

And then by 18 and 19, he's just at a point physically where it's like, it's not the same. It's not fair to compare him to 2014 Clayton Kershaw. He's just not the same pitcher anymore. So I feel like in the early years, there's kind of a more compelling explanation. But I think as you get deeper into it, you're kind of like, it's like a fog of war situation. It's kind of hard to separate, you know, the narrative from what's actually happening.

Yeah, I was left with the question of like, you know, if teams had had, if the Dodgers had had a better handle on, you know, third time through the order effects early in his career, would they have pulled him? And I'm like, you're not pulling that guy off the mound. You know, it doesn't, it wouldn't have mattered, I don't think. He was also better third time through the order. And those bullpens often were not as good. So it's like, what do you do with that? I think one of the things I really appreciated about the book was trying to grapple makes it sound more contentious than I really mean it. But like really get your arms around the totality of his character as a person and acknowledging the places where that is somewhat complicated, right? Where he was, I think, admirable in the way that he listened and talked about the protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

But then you have this, you know, chapter later in the book where he is grappling with, you know, some of the Pride Night controversies last year and perhaps not doing that in the way that I would have. And, you know, I'm curious sort of how you thought about that portrayal because you want it to be nuanced and complicated, but also direct and talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I didn't want to shy away from it because I think that would have been a disservice to readers, you you know to not write about a situation where he you know presented

uh you know opinion that i think was upsetting to a lot of people you know specifically and sort of speaking out against um the sisters of perpetual indulgence last year who's a they're a group uh they're based in san francisco and they have been um they kind of use like sort of uh essentially like kind of i guess for lack of a better term, Catholic imagery. Like, you know, they dress up to sort of raise awareness and, you know, in general are considered, you know, a nice group who does work in the community there. And they were invited to Pride Night by the Dodgers. There was a subsequent sort of like coordinated backlash by some reactionary forces, you know, robocalls and things like that to the Dodgers. And the Dodgers ended up disinviting um this group then they re-invited them and during the process

you know i think um kershaw frankly the way he described it he was just offended that he felt like the uh the group was mocking christianity and so he chose to you know say he disagreed with the team's you know decision to invite that particular group. He was stopped short of saying, I believe he did an interview with Jack Harris of the LA Times where he kind of said, this is not an LGBTQ issue, it's more of this one particular group. I found them offensive. offensive. My personal politics are very different than the people I cover fairly often. And so I, you know, thought it was something that had to be addressed. And so I wanted to talk to him a little bit about just, you know, his thought process on this and his faith, his Christianity is very important to him. It's sort of one of his fundamental beliefs. And, you know, he, you know, believes that, you know, gay marriage violates the tenets of the Bible. He, you know, he, you know, believes that, you know, he did it, gay marriage violates the tenets of the Bible. He, you know, but also has the sort of hate the sin, love the

sinner. He believes all people, you know, deserve lives with, you know, dignity and respect and that sort of stuff. And so, you know, there's nuance there. It's like, I tried to lay it out as best I could in the book. It was definitely not the stuff I think that either of us really enjoyed much talking about, but it felt, you know, necessary at least to try and present the, you know, the full picture of, you know, because his faith is very important to him. It's like, okay, well, here's one of the offshoots of that. And so, and it manifested in a way a lot more publicly than maybe I would have expected when I started working on the book. But yeah, I mean, I hope the book, you know, lays it out in a way that is fair to him, but also, you know, explains sort of why it might have missed the mark, if that makes sense. I'm a sucker for stories about players making a change and then making a leap, unveiling a new stance or a new delivery or a new pitch.

I guess that's why I co-wrote a book about that sort of stories. Yeah. And this book has plenty of that, despite the fact that he's so resistant to change. He has certainly made changes and significant changes over the course of his career. And that has helped him have, I think, a better kind of tw school and his local coach, Skip Johnson, unlocked Kershaw. And you didn't give him full credit. You sort of said, you know, he was present at the creation of Clayton Kershaw. I think you phrased it something like that. was a major change to sort of institute the wind up the delivery that we all associate with Clayton

Kershaw, which really just juiced his velocity, gave him the great deception that makes everything plays up, just gave him great command. Like, is there a world where he doesn't cross paths with that coach and it just doesn't happen for him? Granted, like he was good before, but he wasn't, you know, like best high school prospect in the country. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that has always interested me about this guy is like he was kind of a, you know, he was, I think heading into senior year,

his senior year at Highland Park, he was like maybe the 35th best high school player in the country. So like probably a person who's going to get drafted, you know, but he threw from like a three quarter arm angle. His delivery kind of made his arm hurt. You know, he threw kind of upper 80s or so. He had like a good feel for a breaking ball, but you know, it's kind of intermittent. He, you know, through his agent, JD Smart, he was hooked up with a fellow named Skip Johnson, who the college baseball sickos

will know is now the head coach at the University of Oklahoma. But at the time, he was working at Navarro Junior College in, I believe, Corsicana. And Skip Johnson, you know, agreed to give him some pitching lessons. And he basically gave him this drill called the one, two, three drill that, you know, you're basically to explain how his limbs should move in concert. And that became Kershaw's delivery. And so he's, you know, now he's like he went from three quarters to more over the top. It created some velocity. It added this sort of 12 to six nature to his breaking ball and his command improved, you know, and it just, it just kind of

unlocked everything. Ken Gurnick did a great story about this, you know, 15 years ago or something like that about Skip Johnson. So I was able, you know, so it wasn't like a secret. And so I connected with Skip and was talking to him a little bit. And he was telling me a story about like these, you know, having a showcase for these two scouts who lived in Texas. And I was like, well, you got to tell me, you know, these guys. And one of the scouts, you know, I believe has passed away, but the other one's a fellow named Mark Loomis, who's like still a kind of a, you know, a super scout for the Seattle Mariners. And he, you know, so I was talking to Mark Loomis about just like the experience of seeing Kershaw for the first time. And he was telling me about like, you know, the hair standing

up on the, you know, the back of his neck or, and things like the back of his arm. And he said something to the effect of, this must have been what it was like when Da Vinci painted the Sistine Chapel. And I was just like, totally, that's the guy who painted that. I did get sort of secondhand hair raised, though, from just hearing it. It's cool. That was one of the most cool experiences of the book, is just listening to this guy tell me this the story about something that happened, you know, 18 years ago that like, look, scouts love these stories, but like getting a chance to let him share this

experience and, and talk about the process of, you know, going into the Mariners meetings and being like, this is going to be the best pitcher in the history of Texas. I am telling you, we need to take this guy, you know, whatever it was like fifth or sixth overall. And so there was a lot of experiences with that in the book where you're connecting with people who, you know, had like a minor role or were kind of saw, you know, like I talked to this, this kid who hit a home run against him that like may have caused the pirates not to draft him fourth and overall. And so, and I was telling the guy and I was like, yeah, you know, you like, you cost him millions of dollars.

He was like, well, you know, I'm sorry, Mr. Kershaw, but you're welcome Dodgers fans. It was great. Yeah. So there's stuff like that was like, like the one I said, like it was fun. Like I was just having a blast doing like that all these past couple of years. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, cause you know, you, you mentioned,

and obviously you've spent a ton of time around him and the team when you were the beat covering them, but what was the thing that sort of surprised you the most or changed your opinion of, of him and his process the most in the course of reporting this? Yeah. Well, the thing that surprised me the most was when he told me about flipping his car and the minors, that was not something I was expecting. And the reason that came up is because i was talking to his minor league teammates they're like yeah he used to drive this used tahoe around you know this thing was and i was like what he drove a used tahoe and i was like why'd you have a used car and he was like oh well i flipped my dream car and i was like yeah so i'm gonna have some follow-ups so that was the thing where i was just like you did

what happened but i think one thing that he said to me that i kind of maybe had that changed the way i was thinking about him in some ways is i was under the impression that you know those losses to the cardinals and the mets or whatever like those were kind of the ones that really nodded him because those are the ones that kind of like started the thing of people talking about him being a guy who couldn't get it done in October. And the way he framed it to me was like, he's like, no, like the, you know, the past couple of years, you know, like the Padres losing to the Padres in 2022, like that hurt more in part because he's like, I'm near the end, you know, like I'm not going to get as many chances. And when you're younger, he's like, I'm near the end, you know, like I'm not going to get as many

chances. And when you're younger, you feel like, oh, okay, we'll come back next year. You know, and I guess it's not a unique, like, you know, take that he sort of had, but it just reoriented the way I was thinking about the project and wanted and allowed me to make it more about athletic mortality, I think, than maybe I had initially thought. Yeah, anyone who writes baseball books aspires for them to be about more than baseball, right? I don't know if we're all just like self-loathing or what. We aspire to like writing great literature or something. Or we just want to sell more books.

Well, yeah, you also got to trick the publishers into buying them. They're like, no, it's not just for Dodgers fans. There's universal concepts. They heard me say I don't like single-player books. We got to do other stuff now. I mean, if people who do baseball podcasts professionally don't like single-player books,

we are doomed as an industry. You have to change your perspective, Meg. Well, I liked this one. Okay, I'll take it. Thank you. You have saved baseball publishing, Andy, single-handedly. Because now I'm going to be like, look, I've got to give these another shot. Maybe I just read a bad one a long way back.

I can't remember which. It doesn't matter. He was a married player. Maybe that's why he wasn't single. Anyway. Hang out. Terrible. Wow, hanging out with me too much, Ben.

I know. Just really, really bad. Terrible. Wow. Hanging out with me too much, Ben. I know. Just really, really bad. But also, like, you know, we do love baseball because it reveals these things about, like, human nature and life and everything. It's not just because it's kind of fun to watch people throw and hit baseballs, although that is also fun. And I'm glad you got into the deception aspect of how good he is because I'm sort of obsessed with pitcher deception, specifically the hiding the ball kind where like hitters just can't see the ball because like it's behind someone's head or shoulder or whatever. And Kershaw, usually it's like some fringy guy who like, how does he do it?

Oh, he hides the ball, right? And here it's like guy with some of the best stuff in the world, but also no one can see the ball. So it's like, oh, that's why he's so amazing or that's a big part of it. So that was really cool. But it did strike me sort of how unscientific the development process of Clayton Kershaw was. And granted, like he was really good, obviously, but it would never happen that way today, even, you know, with the Dodgers, the Dodgers most of all, right? Like the whole trying to impose a change up on him, even though he clearly didn't take to it and his like arm action and wrist just don't work that way. That would never happen now. You know, you'd be like, oh, I can't pronate.

Okay, well then we won't try to make you, like someone would have suggested throw a slider years earlier. Like probably like the first time he got on the mound. You know, it's incredible. It's not that long ago. It's not ancient history. And yet it was like trial and error and coincidence and like, you know,

having to run into someone who showed you the grip or had the right recommendation. It's so much more scientific now, you know, for better or worse, right? It's a great point you made too about just like, yeah, for the way the pitchers were raised back then, it's like, you know, throw two seamers and, you know, uh, four seamers up or verboten. And if you're a lefty, you need to have a change up. And, and the way it is now, it's like, well, how does your arm action work? Okay. Let's like, you know, let's fit. And so, yeah, that's part of, part of the book is trying to, you know, fit this guy who was forged in a different era into the modern one, right.

Where there's so much, you know, discussion of like enhancement and things like that. And it was also, you know, kind of going back to an earlier question, you reminded me, I mean, one thing that I really, this is going to sound stupid, but like, I did not take into account just how good his fastball was. I think in part because there was so much,

there's been so much discussion since he hurt his back about his fastball velocity. And it's like, well, you're sitting 91 now. And he would always be like, I used to sit 93. Like what's, you know, what's the difference? Or, you know, it was used to be 94, but in talking to hitters, that 94 was so enhanced because of his deception. And, you know, I, I sort of, it's kind of, you know, Sam Miller wrote about this forever ago when he wrote about the way that he got away with like middle, middle misses. Yes. Yeah. Clayton Kershaw's mistakes, like no one would hit the mistakes.

And no one could do anything with them because they're not picking them up on, you know, on time and things like that. And, you know, because he had this just incredible vertical rise on his fastball that he, there were, you know, he might have had the best fastball in baseball but because it was 93 no one really talked about it that way you know that was back in a time when like we understood good fastball means velocity essentially um and you look at it now we're like i was talking to matt carpenter about this maybe two years ago or some point during this process and and he was like yeah you know he had that like rise at the end like all these guys are like trained to have now and i was like so every pitcher's fastball is designed to look like clayton kershaw's and he's like yeah and i'm like wow no wonder hitting sucks and he was like yeah yeah yeah and i wonder if there's any other great pitcher who's best known for the pitch he throws like least often

his worst pitch it's kind of incredible i mean i guess it's largely Vince Gulley's fault. I guess it's because of the public enemy number one line. And it just, it hasn't been number one in such a long time. You know, like I wonder whether there's even a conflict. People will probably look back on Clayton Kershaw after his career and be like, oh yeah, the Clayton Kershaw, the 12 to six curve. And like, that just didn't play that big a part in his success, relatively speaking. Like I said, reputations are hard to sort of change once they get forged.

And it was like, oh, he's got a big curveball like Koufax. And it's like, well, no. Koufax worked up in the zone with the curveball. But Kershaw works fastball, sliders, glove side, down. That's it. That's what he does. Good luck. Try and hit it. And he's been doing that with some variations here and there, but that's been the bread and butter for 15 years now. And it's very different from, I guess, what the public perception of what it is that makes him great. Yeah, one of the cool things I've always thought is that because Clayton Kershaw came up when he did, we have his whole career on pitch tracking tech, which is a thing that only like a super nerd would think was cool. But I do think it's cool that, you know, it's not StatCast, but we have the entirety of Clayton Kershaw's career preserved. So we can say exactly

how often he threw his curveballs. So I wonder whether you can kind of explain the title here. Maybe we should have led with that, but we could kind of close with it instead. And naming books is one of the worst parts of the process, or at least it has been for me. So I don't know whether this one came easy or whether it was even your first choice, but in what way or ways do you see him as the last of his kind?

He is the last number one starter that can be connected to the sort of historic image of what a number one starter is. And that is not in any way to denigrate, you know, Garrett Cole, who's like the only current number one starter in baseball. Andy is the authority on aces, by the way. No, I think Wheeler's up there. Wheeler's so close. But anyway, imagine Zach Wheeler just listening to some dumbass like me being like, no, you're a number two. He'd just be like, Andy, what is wrong with you? Anyway. But the historic understanding of what a number one pitcher, what an ace is supposed to be, I do believe that Kershaw is the last one. And it's because the

industry has changed, the way that pitchers are trained has changed, the expectation of pitchers has changed in part, I think. And this book tries to chronicle it in part because it demonstrates what the way that the game has become so relentless that you just can't ask those things of pitchers anymore. You know, like part of the reason guys don't go on short rest is because you saw what happened when the best, strongest, most built-for-this pitcher tried to do it. You see what happens when you try and push a pitcher of that caliber through a third time through the order in the seventh inning of a postseason game. There's a reason that it's like six and dive at best for elite starting pitchers in the postseason now, on most circumstances. for elite starting pitchers in the postseason now, you know, on most circumstances. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that he is historically significant both for what he has done and the way he's conducted himself along the way, but also in the way that the game is going to look so different in his wake. Well, I don't know whether you were tempted to wait until the book

was closed, so to speak, on Clayton Kershaw's career before you tackled the book in case there was more material or something went wrong. But I'm glad that you did it when you did so that you beat anyone else to the punch who was contemplating a Clayton Kershaw book. I think it turned out great. And I would have had James Shields and Rich Hill higher on my board of pitchers Andy McCullough would write a book about. But again, you'd probably sell more copies of the Clayton Kershaw book. Yeah. You know, I couldn't interview Rich Hill for this. Really?

We played phone tag for nine months. Huh. Wow. So, I talked to 215 people. Rich is not one of them. And I talked to Rich in February for a story. And he was like, hey, do you still need me for that book rich it's over he goes oh my bad i'm at a yoga retreat in mexico i love that guy he's the best rich is rich is like yeah i mean i don't the

publishing industry does not have like a vast interest in nonfiction stuff, but Rich's story is so great. I mean, what he's made of a career for himself is like – it's understandably inspired a lot of people. He's the best. Well, it's not over. As he said this week. That's right. He's coming back. He's planning a comeback.

As soon as Little League season ends, he's in there, baby. I love it. Okay. I love it. Okay. Well, Kershaw is on the injured list, but you could put Andy McCullough on the bestseller list if you go and pick up the last of his kind, Clayton Kershaw in The Burden of Greatness. Thank you, Andy, and congrats. Thank you guys so much for having me. This was really fun. about those Clayton Kershaw career pitch percentages. According to Pitch Info, the curveball, only 14% of his pitches, twice as many sliders, 28.2%, and then twice again as many four-seamers, 54.1%, though he's thrown far fewer of those in recent years, which is one adjustment he's made. We've got yet another new entry in the ongoing saga of announcers mispronouncing Angels outfielder Taylor Ward's name. This time, the victim is Phillies legend John Kruk. This is from a Phillies-Angels game

on May 1st. Thanks to listener Courtney for flagging that one. And if you'd like more info on the topic we talked about last time, public funding for professional sports facilities, former Effectively Wild guest Dan Moore had a piece on that at The Atlantic, which went up the same day our podcast was published. A serendipitous companion piece. Also, Meg wanted me to issue a correction. The zebra who recently went missing on the outskirts of Seattle was a female zebra.

Her name is Sugar. She goes by Shug. Apologies to Shug. Thank you. access to some perks as have the following five listeners lil toot tanya singh project neo ben rollins and jamie perkins thanks to all of you patreon perks include access to the effectively wild discord group for patrons only monthly bonus episodes playoff live streams prioritized email answers discounts on merch and ad free fan crafts memberships and so much more check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild if. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. Everyone else can contact us via email. Send your questions and comments and intro and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.com.

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at MLB ballparks across the country. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. Meg will once more be on the road next time, but I will be back with one more episode for you before the end of the week. Talk to you soon.