Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2320: Baseball Jobs (Dietician and Fun-Fact Finder)

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Ben Clemens of FanGraphs banter about the latest positional drama regarding Rafael Devers, then discuss whether and why pitchers leaguewide are Yu Darvish-ing and Tyler Holton-ing—that is, throwing more pitch types, and varying their pitch types more based on batter handedness—before answering listener emails about home strike zones and combining bad teams […]

It's Effectively Wild. So stick around, you'll be well-beguiled. It's Effectively Wild. Like Nolan, Ryan was, sometimes. Hello and welcome to episode 2320 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, not joined today by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs who remains on vacation until next week, but in her stead, I have Ben Clemens of FanGraphs.

Hello, other Ben. Hey, how's it going? It's going okay. You are sort of serving as the opener for this episode. I've got a full slate here. I'm doing a baseball jobs episode. And I will be talking to Adam Auer, who is the dietician for the Milwaukee Brewers,

the major league dietician. Yeah. And then after that, I will be talking to Emory Brinkman, who is a professional fun fact finder, a senior editor for Stats Perform. So you're sort of the warmup act today, but nonetheless an important one. Wanted to have you on just to talk about a few things

before I get to our guests here. I can probably catch up on current events with Meg when she returns next week and we can get into all of that in greater depth and this story is evolving, but perhaps just briefly, we could banter about the latest positional kerfuffle involving Raphael Devers, the first base Brujaha.

I knew what you were gonna ask before you said it. This is the, I did not brief you on this, but everyone's tongues are wagging about Rafael Devers. Yet again, this is the sequel to the spring training situation where Rafael Devers wanted to play a position and the Red Sox didn't want him to. Now it's the reverse of that. They want him to play a position and he doesn't want

to. It's the other infield corner position this time, not third base, but first base. He is on a DH only Jag right now. So what do you make of this? Where do you side if you are taking a side in this debate? Well, if I were Rafael Devers and I had seen the play of the defensive first baseman that he had just seen, I, like him, would not be very interested in doing this. Yeah, it's incredibly hard. The Red Sox and Rangers had a first base error off this week.

They're both playing non-traditional first baseman at first base. Their first baseman all look like disasters. And if I were Devers, I would, I think, be understandably a little bit worried about switching to this position mid-season. And now I don't know how much he's practiced first base before, but I do remember that thanks

to various injury issues, he basically didn't wear a glove all spring training. Yes, and his contention, his side of the story is that the Red Sox essentially told him to mothball his glove, that he wouldn't need it. And so it's not as if they told him. So he says that, hey, we might need you at some point. Perhaps Tristan Casas won't hit or will get hurt. And maybe you could take some grounders in your spare time.

They didn't prepare him for this seemingly. Yeah. Now, I will say that I'm kind of surprised that he doesn't just know how to play first base. He's a guy who looks like he should know how to play first base. You know, he's pretty big. He's been in the majors as a not incredible third baseman for quite a while. Not sure he's aware of the fact that he wasn't an incredible third baseman, but that is what

the stats say. Yeah, that is definitely possible that he's not aware, but I don't think it's a shock. You know, like DRS is not, it's not like one system thinks he's bad and the rest in the eye test think he's good. I've watched Rafael Devers play third base. I don't think he's incredible out there. I don't think he is, you know, like early career Nick Castellanos out there or anything, but he wasn't good. And he is like a tall guy who could stretch. I guess he's not that tall, but he's not a tiny

guy. I would be unsurprised if he's fairly good at first base. He's a very coordinated man who has decent reach. Yeah, I think this is a terrible look for him. Like if it is the case that he is just really uncomfortable playing first base, I feel like the way that he's going about it is not giving me that vibe. I don't know how you feel, but it seems to me like he's annoyed. Yeah, I think there's clearly some bitterness here about the way things

went down this spring and Bregman displacing him and perhaps promises assurances that were made to him when he signed that extension, he says about his positional future. It does seem like, yeah, there's a lack of flexibility or adaptability here on his part where, you know, you sign a contract and you're playing a particular position, the money is guaranteed, but the circumstances beyond that are not necessarily. Now it's a two-way street and there's a relationship here and obviously you want some consistency

in how you're treated by a team, but circumstances change. Maybe your play at third base changes. Maybe you're starting first baseman, suffers a season ending injury, right? So like things change. And then ideally a player would step up or if not volunteer, at least acquiesce to the request for the betterment of the team.

And some of the language that he used here, his tone, his facial expression, and the quotes were through an interpreter as widely reported. team and some of the language that he used here, his tone, his facial expression and the quotes were through an interpreter as widely reported. And so there's always some squishiness there when you're translating on the fly. But he said, I know I'm a ball player, but at the same time, they can't expect me to play every single position out there. Well, they really don't. No, they expect him to play only one really. That's the only one that they want him to play. All the others are right out.

And the easiest one though, again, incredibly hard as we all know. And learning a position, familiarizing yourself with any position on the fly during a big league season, it's not actually easy. And yeah, there's specific footwork that you need to have over there and you don't want to get in the way of a runner

and break your arm or something, and you have to stretch and you have to position yourself and the ball's coming off the bat at a different angle. There's certainly nuances to this. Like he should have the raw ability to do it, but I doubt he would be an amazing first baseman from day one, but of course, they don't have the option of an amazing first baseman

as it is, which is why Craig Breslow is coming to Raphael Devers. But he seems to resent Breslow and the way that Breslow has gone about it. I tend to think that in a situation like this, there's probably some fault on both sides. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, there must've been some messaging failure that this probably wasn't approached in the best way by the Red

Sox and wasn't described to him in the best way. And yet this is one situation where though we're generally pro labor on Effectively Wild, I do tend to think that once you sign your contract and you get your money, how you are a lot of money, it is a lot of money And how you are deployed is somewhat out of your hands, or at least it's not entirely in your hands and that there should be a compromise there and you should be willing to do things that are out of your wheelhouse.

So it seems like a little bit of it is kind of, well, you took this glove away from me, I'm not putting on this other glove, at least for now. And this could change, right? Cause things changed in spring training from the initial comments. And of course he wasn't able to play for much of spring training cause of the injury.

And maybe he will walk this back and there will be some sort of detente here, but at least initially it sounds like he's pretty resolved and he's sending a message here. And he has settled in as DH. And so generally I think it is good management and process to have a player have a defined role and make that clear to them and then have them be able to expect that and and be confident in that but you can't just set that

in stone because things change. Yeah I mean I feel like like there is an error on the Red Sox part. When they signed Bregman, they made some frankly not very believable. In retrospect, Whispers about playing him at second base. That didn't make that much sense to me because he's like a long time good defensive third baseman with very little evidence that he'd play second base well, like a lot of his skills seem well suited to third and

Look if they had just gone to Devers before that and said hey man, like we want to win a World Series And we want to sign Alex Bregman to do that and he can only play third base Like we want to do this. I I feel like this might have gone differently Yeah, but I mean I wrote about Bregman and all this talk about him like probably playing second base and I feel like this might have gone differently. But I mean, I wrote about Bregman and all this talk about him like probably playing second base. And I was like, well, it's kind of weird, but why would they make this up? I don't know why they did,

but I feel like they got off on a bad foot there and it's just led to them continually being in this awkward situation. I'm with you, like, Defferts should be playing first base. Like that, it's weird. Thefferts should be playing first base. Like, that, it's weird. The situation should end with him playing first base. But I do feel like they just, they made a string of unforced errors in kind of setting this up

and not getting out front, communicating with their franchise player, a guy they signed to a $300 million contract, and telling him, hey man, we want you to be comfortable with this. Like, we all win together. You need to do this for us to be good. I, surely that broke down somewhere. Yeah. And it's, I get it because of his standing in the organization and he's been there a long time and he was sort of the centerpiece and he was the guy who stayed when others left or were sent away.

And he's only 28 years old. So it's hard to have the humility to say it's time for this to happen. This is not an unusual transition to go from third base to first base or even DTH, but it's maybe a little earlier than that typically happens. And I guess there's a risk if they had gone about it the way that you said, they kind of did maybe,

and we don't know exactly what happened behind the scenes, but if it was more of a act first and then ask for forgiveness later sort of situation, and you figure, well, we'll just sign Bregman and he'll just have to deal with it. Cause like, what if they go to him and say, we want to sign Bregman, and then he puts his foot down and says,

absolutely not, you can't sign Bregman. What do you think it'd end up like now? Yeah, but you really want to have Bregman, and they are better with Bregman. He's been incredible, right? He's been their best player. And so you wouldn't want to then have him draw a line in the sand that would prevent you from signing Bregman or make him even more upset when you then sign him against his wishes. So it's hard. It's true.

You know, it seems like Breslow has handled a lot of this himself and that Cora maybe hasn't. And that's kind of odd. Yeah, that's a problem too. Right, it seems like this is Cora's strength or it's supposed to be. And so, yeah, it seems like that hasn't been the best. And yet at the same time, I would just say you should probably be willing to at least try it,

at least see if it works. And, you know, to act as if it's some sort of slippery slope or something. Like he said, next thing you know, someone in the outfield gets hurt and they want me to play in the outfield. Yeah. I'll be playing shortstop next. No, I assure you that is not what they want to happen. Rockwell has played shortstop in major leagues.

True. Yeah. He's not wrong that they should be on the lookout for a first baseman out there. And you know, you could just go get Anthony Rizzo or someone. We've never seen Brandon Belt be bad. He sat out all last season, but he was good the previous year. But Nathaniel Lowe. I mean, I think that's, that should happen. Yeah. If it just comes down to signing someone who's a free agent or waiver wire or bringing someone out of quasi retirement,

then maybe you resort to that or what you are doing now, which is just kind of have utility players over there. And you know, the rest of their lineup has been good, including Devers. So maybe they can fake it for a while until they get closer to the trade deadline. But it's going to be a tight race, obviously, and they're in contention. And yeah, you know, he said here in the clubhouse, thankfully, the relationship that I have with my teammates is great, but there were some Red Sox beat writers who were,

obviously, teammates aren't gonna go on the record, and you know, right. But there was enough smoke from the beats, just saying that this wasn't going over well with some Red Sox players to make me think that they're overhearing things that perhaps players aren't comfortable putting their name to, but the sentiment is out there maybe that they don't love how Devers is handling this. Well, so one thing I'm curious about is, okay, let's say Devers moves to first base tomorrow.

Yeah. He just overcomes his weaknesses and he says, I'll do it. How does that improve the Red Sox? Like who are they de-aging? Well, look at their roster here. Like David Hamilton? That's not, no, he's fast, not strong. Abraham Toro. Abraham Toro couldn't stick on the Mariners. Like, yeah. And you probably don't want to bring up another prospect. Like if they don't want to bring up another prospect. If they don't want to move one of their other prospects to first for the time being, then you wouldn't want them to DH

probably either. Exactly. I think the solution is for Roman Anthony to play first base. But if they don't want to do that, they don't want to DH him either. Ideally, I guess Yoshida would DH, but he's hurt, right? Yeah. I think if Yoshida were there, you

could imagine this being a very different conversation, where they're like, look, Rafi, right? So, yeah. I think if Yoshida were there, you could imagine this being a very different conversation where they're like, look, Rafi, I'm sorry, but we have to play our best nine hitters. And like you and Masa have to figure it out between you. You guys are both veterans, but one of you has to play first base. But right now it's like, I don't know, like would Romy Gonzalez move from first to DH?

Is that what would happen here? If Devers moved to first, it's not like they have a really credible need for him to play first base at the moment either. Again, I think he's handling it poorly and it's not surprising that his teammates are like, dude, just pick up first base. But I don't know, the Red Sox aren't selling me

on like that they're doing this the right way either. Just everyone is doing it wrong. Yes, there's a blame on both sides. Sometimes that is true. Maybe the juice just isn't worth the squeeze, especially because if he's part-time DH-ing, then he's maybe subject to the DH penalty in a way that he wouldn't be if he's the full-time DH. And I do think that it's a different proposition to say, hey, stop doing something prior to

the season than it is to say, hey, do something new during the season. And it's the second time in 10 weeks and hey, maybe you should have had a backup first baseman. So I'm more understanding, but I'd also like to hear as a fan, as an employer, as a teammate, I'm not thrilled about this, but I'll give it a go. So I brought you on ostensibly to ask you about something that you wrote this week and also last week. You came up with a new stat that tickled me because it kind of provided a way to quantify something that I was already curious about.

I was intrigued earlier this year when Patrick Dubuque wrote something about Tigers pitcher Tyler Holton for baseball prospectus. And he noted that he's essentially two different pitchers based on the hiddenness of the batter, that his arsenal, his repertoire, his pitch usage, it's just completely different based on whether there's a righty or a lefty.

And I thought of this as potential stat blast fodder, and maybe we could find a way to quantify whether this is the most extreme disparity based on batter hindness for a pitcher. And I didn't talk to you about that, but you independently found a way to look into that and found that yeah, Tyler Holton is extreme and pretty unparalleled. But you also looked at this on a team level and on a league level. And it's really interesting because you found that the league as a whole is Tyler

Holtoning to a greater extent than before. Not nearly the extent that Tyler Holton is. But pitchers today are much more cognizant, seemingly, of, hey, maybe I should actually vary which pitches I throw based on who I'm facing, which seems elementary, but they're actually doing it more and more now. Yeah. So just to give an idea of how we're quantifying this and what it looks like, I take the two pitches that a pitcher throws most frequently

when they have the platoon advantage. So Tyler Holton's a great example. He throws his sinker and his slider when he has the platoon advantage. That's a normal thing. We talk about relievers as sinker and his slider when he has the platoon advantage. That's a normal thing. We talked about relievers as sinker slider guys, or even starters as sinker slider guys. Those pitches work really well when you have platoon advantage,

and then you compare it to what they throw when they don't. For a lot of pitchers, it's like, I will add it to change up. Tyler Hulton gets rid of his sinker and slider instead of throwing them 95 percent of the time, he throws them like 5% of the time and throws everything else instead. But you can imagine a lot of ways to do that that aren't so extreme.

Logan Webb is a guy I like using as an example because it seems like he's learning a lot of modern pitch trends as we go. And he's pretty sinker-sweeper, but kind of the same thing when he faces righties, and he's very good. Logan Webb is one of the best pitchers in baseball, and it's largely because he is just very good against righties.

He throws sinkers, sweepers, and change-ups to righties, but mainly sinkers and sweepers. What does he do against lefties? Well, he used to throw sinkers, sweepers, and change-ups and kind of get hit around. That was a pretty bad solution. He amped up his change-up a lot, but he just didn't have good options.

What he's done is learn a cutter. His cutter is not very good. I watched him talk about it a lot when I was writing about this. He laughs about how it's not a very good pitch. He calls it pretty all right in interviews. He was like, yeah, it's okay. It's a completely average pitch, which makes it his fourth best pitch. But he throws it 20% of the time to lefties because it, it is just a lot better

than his other options against them. And more and more guys are doing this. And I think that is really, like you said, the league is Tyler Hultening, not to the degree that Tyler Hulten is, but to a degree of in 2015, guys would get rid of 12% of their best options in exchange for other options, like 12 percentage point usage. And now we're up at like 17%.

So 50% more bagging of your good pitch to go throw something new you've learned. Yeah. That's a good amount. And I actually think it makes the league look pretty different. When you see relievers, I think that the majority of places where this is happening is in guys who are kind of East-West relievers and starters.

When you see those guys, now they almost always have some kind of change-up. And if you remember, you know, a few years ago, the splitter getting taught more was in vogue. And last year and this year, the kick change up getting taught more. That's a change up that lets you, is it pronation? I forget whether it's pronation or supination. I think if you're pronating, you can't

throw a standard change. But you can throw a kick change. That's just a big alteration in the way that pictures work now is increasingly we can say, hey man, you're like really good, really good when you're doing what you want to. Uh, and now when you can't, let's make you less at a disadvantage. It makes all the sense in the world. It's one of these things where you think, well,

why didn't this happen before? We've had this data for a while and we've known that certain pitch types have pronounced platoon tendencies and are more hittable and more damage is done to them by one handedness or the other. And so why wouldn't you vary things? And I guess the answer is it's easier not to. And, you know, maybe like there's some value to being in a routine and not varying up your approach and just kind of getting more practice and knowing what you're throwing as opposed to having to have it in your heads. Okay, I'm facing a righty now, it's different from a lefty, even if now your catcher is still calling your pitches potentially, but even so it's a little more to think about

and vary and I guess there could be some tough to quantify downsides to that potentially, but there should certainly be some advantages to saying, well, this kind of pitch gets crushed when I'm facing this kind of hitter, so I just will throw something else instead. Yeah, I'd argue that just the level of practice has improved so much. Like you can learn so much more

per pitch thrown in practice. That it's just making it easier to do this. I buy the whole like whole like mastery is important. I get better at stuff when I do it a bunch of times over and over again. I think that what you're talking about, these hard-defined effects of consistency, they're definitely hard to find,

but I would guess that they've gone down a lot as it gets easier to master things, as learning is improved. And not only as teams get better at this, but as pitchers bringing outside consultants, as labs learn new things, it's just easier to learn new stuff. Now. It's easier for us like in the the lay world. And it's much easier for athletes with huge teams of people helping them. So yes. And because of that, there seems to be a perception

that we're in this era of pitchers just you-darvishing in addition to Tyler Hultening. So they just have more pitches, which would make it easier to do what we're saying, essentially, to just put a pitch in your back pocket when you're facing a lefty or a righty or whatever it is and throw something else because you have something else. So there was a BP piece just today

about the Cubs Ben Brown who doesn't do this, kind of goes against the grain, but the piece said if 2023 was the year of the sweeper and 2024 was the year of the splitter, 2025 is the year of the pitch mix. All around the majors pitchers of all profiles are diversifying their plans of attack because pitch design and yeah,

it's easier to pick up these things. I did just quickly check to see if I could see that. And it's kind of hard to see, at least with the data I was looking at. So I just looked at starting pitchers with at least 80 innings as starters last year and in 2008, which is the first year of pitch tracking. And I looked according to the savant,

the MLB classifications at FanGraphs. And I just looked for the average when it came to, okay, did you throw a pitch any amount of the time? So even if you just threw it one time, basically. So what's the average number of pitches that you threw? And yeah that pitches period you have whether I'm good you've done Yes, you can throw them and that hasn't changed in 2008. It was 5.0 in 2024 it was 5.0 if I raised the bar to at least 5%

Pitch usage so you're not just throwing it once, but you're throwing it a little more often It's gone from an average of 4.3 to 4.4. So essentially unchanged. And then if you raise the bar to at least 10% of the time, it's gone from 3.5 on average, pitch types to 3.7. So again, barely any change there. And that's with the classifications that I think break it up into 12 different classifications.

I also looked for relievers and I set the innings pitch minimum at 50 there. And for any number of the pitches that you have, it was on average 4.5 pitches per reliever in 2008. That's actually gone down to 4.1. So maybe relievers have figured out which pitches work and that they don't need as many and that they've specialized. And if you raise the bar to 5% usage, average of 3.4 versus 3.4 unchanged and at least 10%

usage, it's gone from an average of 2.7 to 3.0 last year. These are means, not medians, but those haven't really budged. The things that that can't capture though, is these sub-classifications of pitches. So those pages have, you know, slider, but they aren't broken up into traditional slider and sweeper, and they're not, you know,

kick change versus change or like different shapes of fastball and everything. So I'm willing to believe that those things have expanded somewhat, but if you just go with those high level classifications, doesn't actually seem like everyone's you Darvish suddenly. Yeah, so I investigated this as well. And I can give you Holton as an interesting example of why

it's so hard to find data on this. So if you go look at Tyler Holton's page, I'm looking through a stat-cast data right now. He throws a fastball 12% of the time. He throws a cutter 37% of the time, a sinker 15%, a slider 14%, a curveball 3%, a change of 18%. It actually sounds like he's pretty well diversified, but he's not. He's not.

He just too undiversified portfolios. Right? Yeah. Like he's very concentrated in what he does to lefties and he's very concentrated on a different thing than what he does to righties. And it's kind of weird, like looking at pitch mix kind of misses this because what you really want to look at is like how much they're breaking their pitch mix tendencies between pitchers. Like, Hugh Darvish is notable because he throws so many pitches, but you could throw four pitches only and still be

two different pitchers to lefties and righties. One of my favorite examples of a guy who I think gets some really good separation between what he does to different people is Raicele Iglesias. And Raicele Iglesias is a three-pitch guy, and he's kind of always been a three-pitch guy. I mean, this is a classic, like, I don't know, maybe you can classify things slightly more with him, depending, like, maybe, like you said, if there's two different, like, leans of this match. Uh, now he's splitting up his fastball a bit more, going, uh, four-scene, two-scene.

But he wants, he likes to do fastball plus secondary. That's his normal attack. And that secondary against righties is a sweeping slider. The secondary against lefties is a change-up. I mean, it's not like he's throwing seven pitches to figure this out. He's just saying, well, I will just completely bag my slider here, and I'll completely get rid of my change up here.

Look, it's like I'm getting to be two pitchers without having to learn so many things. Pitch mix by handedness is, that's what I think is changing. Not so much that guys are learning a million new things. Maybe they are, but like you said, pitchers have always tried to dabble. I think that what's more interesting is how much they're kind of bifurcating.

Right. And you broke it down by team, and I don't know that there was the clearest trend in the world between teams that we think of as super progressive and analytical and teams that we don't. It didn't really break down along those lines, but I'll link to the posts if anyone wants to see where their team ranks. But it does seem like that should produce some sort of effect on a league wide level. Like it does seem like it's better for pitchers to tailor their pitch mixes to the strengths or weaknesses of the hitter in that way, in handedness at least, assuming that

they're not just throwing worse pitches overall, like more optimal pitch types, but worse pitches, that would be bad. But it's just really tough to tease out the signal here if there is one, because you could think, well, will this just reduce the overall league wide platoon split? But I guess not yet, right? But it's another example of how pitchers can do something and hitters can't really counter it. I mean, they could just be on the trajectory machine

and they could practice and they could see these pitches more. But pitchers can just say, I'm going to throw you a better pitch in this situation. And hitters will just say, all right, well, I'll try to hit it like I was before. Like, they can't really, they have to react. And this is just another advantage that pitchers can exploit. Well, so here's one interesting thing that I've been wondering about.

I first started wondering what this would do to platoon data, but this is actually coming from both directions. Sure, it's learning change-ups, but it's also learning sweepers. One way you could see your adaptation score go up is if you learn a new pitch that you can only throw the same handed guys. So let's say that you used to be a pretty vertical guy, you know, like four seamer curve ball, and maybe you had a kind of bullet slider in between there. And then somebody teaches you a sweeper, and you're like, Whoa, great,

this thing moves 15 inches, I got to start throwing it to righties. Well, now your platoon advantage would go much bigger, in the opposite way. So you can imagine it now making it look like righties have a harder time hitting righties. There's lots of difficult ways. Like you said, hitters could be getting better at this too.

There could be a big familiarity effect countering that like, yeah, the first mover advantage was with pitchers. But now that everyone throws a change up, lefties see a lot more change ups and they've got trajects so they're seeing more change ups in practice. I always find that when you look for stuff in these big aggregates, it's really hard to find even if pitchers are doing something new.

I want there to be an effect, but I don't know where I'd be able to see it. It seems tricky. Yeah. I guess I also don't want there to be an effect because pitchers are good enough as it is. That is true. It is kind of a bummer that all of these changes seem to improve pitchers. Well, cats and mice, pitchers and batters, it's the eternal battle of baseball.

It's what keeps us interested in all this stuff. So we will continue to monitor that. And now we can wrap up with you with our sponsored segment, our What If Sports, What If of the Week. Are you a sim game guy at all? Like not no, but not not like just a normal amount, I guess I'd say. Okay. I mean, I guess what might constitute a normal amount

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But basically, what if home teams could control their own strike zone? And we've considered this in the past with the ball too, like what if each team could have its own? Yeah, dead in the ball, whatever different configuration of the ball. But a dead in the ball, whatever, you know, different configuration of the ball. But a home field strike zone, essentially. So Andrew wrote in about this, Jacob wrote in about this

and suggested, Jacob says, in the same way that teams have the ability to set the dimensions of their ballpark within certain restrictions, teams could be allowed to adjust the strike zone as well within certain general limits. Some teams may choose to have wider strike zones, narrower ones, higher or lower, et cetera.

Perhaps you could even allow non-rectangular zones that get wider at the knees, let's say. Umpires could still be hired by the league and assessed based on their accuracy, but the accuracy would be compared to the specific team's official strike zone. Yeah, that's tough. Obviously, umpires would likely not be able

to be randomly assigned to different series, and each ballpark would probably have a dedicated umpiring crew which could still lead to some bias toward or who knows maybe against the home club. But hey this idea would never get implemented anyway so really who cares about the marginal potential for bias. Hey we never acknowledge that when we're answering our hypotheticals. We treat them as if they could actually happen. Anyway Jacob says could certainly add an interesting new strategic layer.

In the same way that teams are incentivized to pick players who are well-suited for a ballpark, teams could be strongly incentivized to acquire pitchers and to a lesser extent hitters who are well-suited to their particular strike zone. And even from game to game, there'd be a lot of new strategy. Do you use your control fastball pitcher today

when you're in a stadium with a big zone? Or do you hold them for the next game when you're playing at a field with a tiny zone? Your slider-heavy pitcher is lined up to pitch today, but this field's zone is narrow and low. Do you move up your curveball or on short rest? Or it could affect your pitch usage, I suppose. So what do you think of this? I guess it's a little more palatable, maybe manageable than the previous scenario, but also, this would be hard on the hitters and the pitchers. This would be hard on everyone, frankly. Yeah, I think the first thing that I think would happen

is that home field advantage would explode. Oh yeah. And both ways, right? Like if you have a wide and short zone at home, you're gonna play a lot worse on the road when the zones are like differently shaped. Yeah. Because you're just gonna be sitting thinking this and vice versa. Guys are gonna come into your stadium and your pitcher will just be picking off these corners and they're like that's not a strike. So I

think that home field advantage both ways, it would be very, it's like Coors hangover essentially for everyone, would be the first-order effect to me. It would get very hard to not hit at home. And I don't even know how much easier it would get to hit at home. Probably some, but this is a classic. The pitchers get to choose where they throw it, and the batters have to react. So I think it would be really tough for hitters.

It would make hitting on the road just an absolute nightmare, which would make every home pitching staff look good. Yes. That's the number one. Would smart teams be better able to take advantage of this than nonetheless smart teams? I mean, presumably. I don't think in an interesting way, honestly. You can't just only have one archetype of pitcher. That doesn't seem to work well, and that's before you consider that your opponents can have different size strike zones. That doesn't seem to work well, and that's before you consider that your opponents can have different size strike zones. One thing I do appreciate about this

is that if there's an efficient, like an optimal strike zone for pitching, well, at least you have to use it both ways. So it'll probably just lower offense, because everything lowers offense. But at least you don't get to, at least the two teams aren't taking different strike zones. I think that would be bad. Like what I do appreciate about this

is that it offers the chance for some diversification, but not in a way that would make any one game feel miserable. I think it's probably a bad idea because it's not weird enough for me to appreciate it. Like if I watched a game and the zone was wider, I'd be like, oh, okay. Great, great. Yeah, right. Great. Great.

Yeah, right. Baseball wouldn't be different enough to justify it. Yeah, I want baseball more different. I want the pit. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I think there would be a lot to analyze, potentially. And that's good, I guess, for podcasters and bloggers and front office people.

But it would be bad for spectators, because you'd never know what was a strike. There'd have to be a strike zone graphic, of course, but it would just feel kind of arbitrary, even if it's not entirely arbitrary. And yeah, I guess the level of play just in general would probably be worse because players are getting jerked around massively with different... Yeah. And just watching the game and not knowing inherently, okay, that looks like a strike

to me. Well, does it? Where, where are we again? Which ballpark is this? You know? Yeah. I'd rather have other stuff changed, basically. I think that I like when there's just one strike zone and you can do different stuff

with it. Like you can change different other things, but the strike zone is elemental. That's kind of how I feel in terms of like what I want. I, I like the thinking that like home teams should get the change different things. This is just not one I've changed. Yeah. Okay. New what if of the week. This comes from Patreon supporter wandering Winder who says question inspired by

discussion in the discord group. How many teams starting from the worst in the bigs would you have to merge together? I.e. all the players, assets get grouped together into a single franchise before you'd have a franchise that is good enough to compete for a playoff spot. How many before you'd get a legit World Series contender slash favorite?

So there's probably a version of this where we could do a lot of math. And also probably we could use what if sports to simulate this and put some wrestlers together. This is exactly the kind of question that could be answered in that way. But we could go with our guts to some extent here. How good would a team be if you just like, okay, if you take the two worst teams, if you take the Rockies and the White Sox and you smush them together, that's still not going to be a good team.

That's not good enough. I mean, that's still not going to be a good team. That's not good enough. I mean, that's only 16 wins if you had their wins. Yeah, right. Exactly. Sometimes you're going to get duplicative talent too, so you're going to get... Yeah, and some of them might not be willing to play first base. Yes, exactly.

Right. And so your best player on one roster plays the same position as your best player on another roster and so you might have to move one of them and then they wouldn't be as good. And there's the goodness with the White Sox and Marlins, the White Sox and Rockies that won't come up. Exactly. And that's the thing. You have to have a certain amount of star power here. It helps, I guess, to minimize the abysses, just the replacement level killers, as JJF says, like the positions where you're getting no production. You hope that between two teams, three teams,

like there's going to be someone playable there who's better than replacement level at that position. But it's going to take a while to get good. I basically did this as an article exercised several years ago at The Ringer. It was headlined, yeah, meet the Ori oils. Could we combined MLB's two worst teams into a winner? This was the Ori oils and the Royals and I smushed together their rosters and I had projections and did it in a very mathy way.

And the takeaway was that they would still be pretty bad. Yeah. Those O's were even kind of interesting. Yeah, right. And so, okay, I'll just quote from this. The two teams put together would have the American League's eighth best rotation, 11th best team offense, 12th best bullpen and worst team defense.

In the same schedule neutral American League, they'd be expected to win 73.8 games, roughly a 456 winning percentage. That's nine to ten more games than either the Royals or the Orioles would win on their own, but not enough to vault them up to 500, let alone to make them a winning team. Those weren't even terrible teams. Like you noted there that, you know, nine games more than what they would have won is in the 70s. That's not the case with the Rockies. Yeah. That's not where we are.

Yeah. So looking at this in a more feel kind of way, the bottom two teams is not enough. The bottom three teams is not enough. Yeah, the Marlins. I'm doing on projected rest of season run differential on fan graphs as kind of a shorthand for who the worst teams are.

I don't feel like legislating this. And I think the Marlins is still not enough. Now you're starting to get kind of interesting and it would basically be the Marlins roster plus marginal upgrades. Like they're a lot better than the Rockies and White Sox. Once you add the fourth team, the Angels, I think you have a playoff team.

Yeah, right. If we put the Angels, if think you have a playoff team. Yeah, right. If we put the Angels, if we put the Pirates in there, suddenly we have Skarns. It's all about, yeah, it's like collecting these real standout players, and the White Sox and the Rockies, they just barely have any of those guys. Well, what I would argue is that the White Sox and Rockies

almost add nothing. Because the problem is that there's, there are types of guys you want on a champion, on a playoff roster, and they don't all have to be stars. But how many guys in the Rockies could be on a playoff team? It's not many. They're just across the board,

replacement level almost, except for a few guys. It's not like they're stars and scrubs, they're like scrubs. Exactly. And that means to me that they're not really doing much for you. Like maybe the odd reliever here or there. And the White Sox at least have like,

like Miguel Vargas can be a rotational dude. Luis Robert Jr. can be a rotational, he can be a starter. Like not anymore, I don't think you're best starter, but he can play. Maybe Edgar Cuero could be in there. Like there's some guys, but these teams have like no pitching. They have no pitching.

Yeah. At least the Marlins have a pitching staff of sorts. I think that Angels and Marlins, again, using the fan graphs ordering, they're getting kind of close. Yeah. Just with those two, because the Angels have some starzy scrubsy shape to them. Like Zach Neto is, he's a completely legitimate player to have on your playoff team. I'd be very happy with that. There's just so few guys on the Rockies in White Sox. It's like you're taking these off. Yeah, so I think four teams you could do it. Even if you're excluding the Pirates, which I think is fair to do he's a

little too good skeins a little too good to really be an awful team. Yeah, but once you're adding like the Nats and Reds who are fifth and sixth worse, now that's like a good team. Yes, and this year and recent years maybe are a little out of the norm when it comes to how bad the worst teams are. So there's a little bit of an era effect here. There might be some years where putting together the bottom three teams looks like gets you a playoff contender, but yes, I agree. This year at least it's for get my man, Logan Ohapi in there.

Yeah, I think at four it's a good team. Yeah. Now to get to world series favorites or strong contender, I feel like if you added two more to that, if you added like if you, yeah, you put the Reds and the Nats in there and suddenly you have wood and gore and they like Cruz and you know, green and like now you're, you're talking, right? So Matt McClain, the Reds and the Nats together might almost be like, you know, an L title contender.

So I think that at six you could do it. But yes, two is definitely not enough. I think three is not enough. I actually don't, this year, I'm with you that in a lot of years, three would be, but right now the bottom three teams are just really bad. Yes. Okay, well, I will let you go.

Thank you for coming in and subbing. Absolutely, thank you for having me on. And after a quick break, I will be you go. Thank you for coming in and subbing. Absolutely. Thank you for having me on. And after a quick break, I will be back with Adam Auer to talk about the diets of big leaguers. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be pedantic about baseball? If baseball were different, how different would it be? On the case with light ripping, all analytically, cross-check and compile, find a new understanding, not effectively, why the Kenyan not be pedantic?

Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic? All right, I am joined now by Adam Auer, the major league dietitian for the Milwaukee Brewers. Hello, Adam. Hey Ben, how are you doing? Doing well. I think this is one of those jobs where we might have to explain the basics to some people because this position hasn't existed for that long. If I did my research right, I think the first major league teams to hire

full-time dieticians were the Rangers and the Dodgers in early 2016. So this is less than a decade that the position of major league dietician in baseball has even existed. So maybe we can start with just a little primer. What does a major league dietician do? I guess on the most basic level, like I'm here to help optimize athletic performance, right? Like just kind of tuning in to everything that's going on with the athletes, whether that's in-game performance, workload, all of those things, and just trying to tune in to how I can help

fuel them for success. You did this for the Marlins last year, and before that you were a strength and conditioning coach for the Angels and the majors and the minors. Maybe we'll get into that a little bit later, but you had to get different certifications and study for this while you were with the Angels as a strength and conditioning coach. So what are the credentials one needs or that are desired to be a major league dietician? I guess we can go back a little bit further, but I was a minor league strength and conditioning coach

for the Los Angeles Angels. I started in 2013, you know, had a passion for nutrition and just realized like just how impactful at the minor league level nutrition was when we didn't have a budget for it. I had like a $50 a day fruit and smoothie budget. I'd be going to the grocery store asking the clubhouse attendant, hey, can you grab me some spinach and some frozen berries and you know grab some gelatin and I'd be whipping up shakes pregame and postgame for these guys just to just to kind of get

Some extra calories some nutrients into them So that was sort of your job then even as a strength and conditioning coach You were kind of also a dietitian to some extent, even if that wasn't an official position. Yeah, I think more by choice. Not everybody at the minor league level is going to do that. Maybe I was going the extra mile because I was passionate about that. I did see how fueling these guys appropriately was contributing to maybe some improved performance metrics and ability to maintain lean muscle mass and all of those things that kind of like go hand in hand

with nutrition and training, right? And then, yeah, I got promoted to be the Major League Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach. This was before I knew I was gonna be getting promoted. Our then dietician and still current dietician for the Los Angeles Angels, her name's Becky Twombly, now Becky Rale.

Absolutely phenomenal. And she kind of like nudged me in that direction, right? But kind of made that decision in 2018 and got accepted to the University of Arizona to do my dietetic work, like nutritional sciences undergrad basically. I needed a verification statement to enter my dietetic internship. So it's like three years of coursework, 88 units over those three years. So I was grinding a little bit. There was a lot of late nights after games up till two, three o'clock in the morning just sitting in the office, you know, working through my course

work and stuff. And then I sat for the credentialing exam, became a registered dietician in 2023. So when we talk about dietetics, maybe you can kind of explain what we're talking about here. I mean, we're not just talking about eat your veggies, right? Like, what's the science of nutrition and how has that advanced? Man, it's probably advanced quite a bit in the last number of years, especially with, you know, this influx of information, you know, that everybody has at the palm of their hand and their cell phone. But really for me, I am focusing on a lot of the basics with the guys, just making sure that we're meeting our macronutrients, we're meeting our micronutrients, and really just helping to

support them at a basic level. Now, within that, when a guy gets put on maybe an antibiotic or Within that, when a guy gets put on maybe an antibiotic or he's on NSAIDs and stuff, I'm trying to navigate what we can supplement, what we can't, what's contraindicated, all of those things. But really at the basic level, I'm just trying to help support these guys, make sure they're fueled well during the day, and then utilizing supplements to help get them a lot of the nutrients that they can't. For example, creatine. You have to eat quite a bit of steak to get your five grams or 10 grams of creatine in a day. So utilizing supplements in that way to help kind of bolster what we're already doing on the, on the fueling side of things, right?

And are most major leaguers taking creatine, let's say, which is, I guess, you know, there's so many supplements out there and there's so much junk science about it, right? And creatine seems to be one of the ones that is actually quite proven and demonstrated to enhance performance to some extent without any apparent downsides. So is that something that most big leakers are doing? I would imagine so. I would hope so. I think it's like it's a very low hanging fruit for a number of different reasons, whether

that's performance and or cognitive benefit because it does cross the blood-brain barrier. So yeah I think there's tons of benefit to it and I think that kind of everybody along the lifespan whether that's like a young teenager or an old geriatric you know somebody in their later years, I think everybody can find a benefit from creatine. And how one size fits all is your advice or how individually tailored are these things? I mean, are you doing blood work and generating tailored plans for a particular person or is a lot of it just here's some advice that would probably benefit anyone? Yeah, I think everything's general and individualized as well, right? I think that there's certain foundational things that we all need to do.

But then you're right, we are doing and taking blood work and looking at labs at spring training and everybody does that. Looking at the specifics of those so I can understand how to support the athlete better is definitely when we start to like get into the weeds on how we're going to help improve athletic performance. Some of those things will probably guide some decisions that we're making in, you making in how an athlete might fuel or allow me to get

deeper into what their habits are like and what foods and stuff typically are in their diet. And just understanding those things on a more deeper level allows me to kind of like peel the onion away or like peel the layers away and And really just like work to refine those things. I mean even in For example in spring training we had we had an athlete who over the course of a week was Cramping in a couple games pregame First order of business. It's like alright. well, let's get you on like a pregame smoothie. I make you a pregame smoothie. We're kind of like,

I was kind of looking at like, what is this athlete fueling with prior to the game? Just trying to support them from an energy standpoint, continue to cramp and I was, you know, kind of racking my brain on some things. And then we dove in a little deeper, hey, are you taking your supplements? Are you taking this, this, and this? I've been inconsistent. Since he's been consistent with that, he hasn't had another cramp.

So, there is some of that where that individualization, once we can dive a little deeper and really understand how they're fueling can provide us with some insight that we can, in this case, keep the athlete on the field, right? Yeah. Can you give an anonymized or entirely hypothetical example of something you might see in blood work? So you take this test in spring training, you get the readout back, you spot something and you say,

oh, here's potentially an area for improvement where we could tweak something about the diet and bring this number up or, you know, what exactly could you see that would then directly lead to, here's a remedy. Yeah, I think vitamin D is probably one that is very objective. Yeah. Given my lifestyle, I'm guessing I need more of that. Yeah. Yeah, part of that is like, hey, get outside,

get some sunlight. The other side of that is that we have athletes that come from Florida or Arizona, and they have the opportunity and have been outside all off season, but show up with a vitamin D score that is a little less than desirable. So we basically just work off of, deficient is less than 20 nanograms, and if an athlete's below that, I supplement them with a certain amount.

If they're between 20 and 30, supplement them with a different amount, 20 to 30 or 30 to 40, a different amount. Ideally like them above 40, and then that's just a maintenance dose. From my standpoint, I saw the importance of this. I was at the beginning of last year, mine was at 38, which is pretty decent for a 39-year-old guy

that's not an athlete anymore, but still likes to train. Supplemented consistent over the last year and went up to 63. So for me, I saw the benefit of that and how that's helped to improve me. And then knowing that we have this objective way of supplementing our guys is pretty cool. So can you describe the spread these days? What's the state of spreads? Or if we're not talking about the full

post game spread or pre game spread, what's available to players in the clubhouse whenever they want? What can they expect to see? And what part do you play in dictating the food options or drink options available? Yeah, I think that pretty much everything is available to them, right? You know, sometimes you go into visiting club houses and it looks like you just walked into a 7-Eleven. I would say that over, I haven't been in the game long enough to know what it was like before, but I would say that it's drastically improved. From a spread standpoint, I mean, we provide three meals to them, you know, typical night

game. Lunch is there around noon or one or whenever that first bus arrives. And then we have a pregame meal and then we have a postgame meal. And obviously the, you know, the postgame meal is that takes the cake, right? You usually steak a lean protein option like chicken, and then a fish or shrimp crustacean option. Then everything from lobster mac and cheese, and awesome potatoes, and that kind of stuff on the starch side. No shortage of great food in there, that's for sure.

Yeah. And is there a chef? Do teams have chefs or how is that food prepared? Is it catered? Is it pre-prepared, et cetera? Or is it made right there? Yeah, we're fortunate at home. We have an awesome chef and culinary team

that's working on prepping all of our food. I do cater a little bit at home. I cater on nights at home where there's a quick turnaround. So night game to day game, typically like a Saturday night to a Sunday day game, getaway day. You might have another one of those midweek, right? Where the team comes in for a three game set. Tuesday night is a night game.

Wednesday is a day game. That's the day that they're getting out of town. So I usually cater on that night to just kind of alleviate the culinary team a little bit, allow them to get out a little bit earlier, less clean up, and allows them to get a little bit more rest. Otherwise, that turnaround time's pretty, pretty quick. And then everything on the road is all, is all catered. There are a couple places that have a culinary team

in the visiting clubhouse that, that can make some preparations right there, like full, full meals. Some of those are outsourced to like a Kitch Fix or something like that. But yeah, most of it is me catering three meals. Clubhouse attendants are awesome. They send me and all dietitians a food guide and then we just kind of like work our way through that. This would fit here, this would fit here. We just kind of like piece that puzzle together. And I'm thinking of Crash Davis and Bull Durham talking about his 21 days in the big leagues and somebody else carries your bags. You never handle your own luggage. You hit white balls for batting practice. The hotels all have room service. I'm sure he couldn't have even of what you're describing here. The clubhouses all have chefs and we've got a dietitian catering for us.

It wasn't happening that way then, but sounds nice. Sounds big league. This I could get behind. It's funny too, because at the beginning of the year, like I drop off, you know, you drop off your luggage and, you know, I got on the bus for the first time and I was like, wait a second, do I have everything? And then magically, there it is, you know, there's a lot of people working behind the scenes that kind of make your life a little bit easier, right? Yeah. Now, is there any candy? Are there any junk foods? Are there any cheat days? Or are you

figuring that's happening away from the clubhouse plenty, so we'll just give them the healthy stuff and they'll have to source their own junk food? There is. There is. There's candy every, I'm not going to say everywhere. I at home have tried to kind of shape our athletes environment a little bit more. We do have peanut M&Ms in the clubhouse, I will say that. But other things I've tried to just kind of make things

a little bit more healthful. You know, we have my go-to and I've kind of figured this out over the last couple years, but dried mango is, you know, really sweet, provides, you know, 35 to 40 grams of carbohydrates for every three or four pieces, and can kind of be that sweet tooth snack. I actually put them on the bench for the guys in game to give them a little carbohydrate if they want. But there is candy around. I think it's probably a little bit more prominent

in the visiting clubhouses, which is fine. And that's also like- Trying to sabotage your guys with a bunch of candy. Yeah, I mean, but I also think that that's kind of my job to allow the athletes to understand how those things can fit into their fueling. If you're just sitting at your locker, not really doing anything, having a couple of Snickers and mini Snickers and just kind of snacking away, probably not the best time to do it.

But if you wanted to grab a snack-sized thing of skittles and a Snickers bar right before your workout, okay, we're going to utilize that energy, right? Like that's going to help power you through your workout. So there's a time and place for all of that, right? And we just have to find ways to navigate that and, you know, do my job on my end to educate, hey, this can fit in here, and then allow them to make their decisions too, right? Yeah, so here's some Skittles, but also yeah, check out the mango,

here's some sweet potato, it says sweet right in the name. This is good for you and also tastes good. And then after their workout, again, there's no shortage of food around. There's very little time throughout the day where there's not food out on the line. So, you know, post-workout, then they can grab the rice and beans and, or sweet potato and chicken breast

and, you know, throw some vegetables on there and really, like, fortify their workout, right? Support that. How do the nutrition requirements or recommendations, how would they vary for your typical big leaguer versus just your average person? And obviously the caloric requirements are going to be different. These are mostly large men who are active and lifting and everything else. But also just how would the advice vary, I guess, when you're talking to a professional athlete and a baseball player specifically,

versus just your average listener to this podcast right now? Everything's going to be based off of really what your energy expenditure is, right? And the demands of expenditure is, right? And the demands of the game, right? I don't think that those two things are completely siloed. Like I wouldn't give completely different information to yourself who's going to the gym. A lot of that is going to overlap, right?

Now, the biggest thing that I want to focus on with our guys is their recovery. They got to go out and play 162 games in 188 days or something like that, right? They have to be able to post every single day. So, really at the forefront of that is recovery. What can we do to help you help your tissue recover on a daily basis so that you can go back out there and do it again tomorrow night or tomorrow morning, right? So some of that, there's just maybe a little bit more urgency

on that side of things. Yeah, I don't think that a lot of that information is going to be too different, just how we utilize it. They're going to need more carbohydrate. They're going to need more protein. We have to support some of the recovery in different ways that I might not be recommending to yourself. But in general, I think just really focusing in on some of those needs for the big

leaguer, right? And so do you have a team wide meeting? Do you speak to the whole roster in spring training and just lay out some of the principles or tips in addition to the one on one meetings that you're having? During spring training, I met with the coaching staff had a fun opportunity to kind of let them know because I was new to the organization and fill them in about who I am, where I'm from, what I believe in, how

I'm going to help support the athletes and the coaching staff as well. But for me, everything takes place on, you know, I'm integrated into the clubhouse. I'm fortunate enough to be with the team at home, on the road. I'm with them all the time. So I connect with, I would say, almost every single athlete, every single day. Just, hey man, how are you doing? How have you recovered? How are you feeling? What have you got today? And then I spend probably some time in the food room,

some time in the, I'm fortunate enough also to be in our performance office with the rest of the strength coaches, head strength coach, assistant strength coach, and the other assistant strength coach. So, I'm fortunate enough to be integrated into those spaces. So I can just pop out of the office and connect with the guy, you know, as he's getting ready to have his workout and the supplement station is right there. So I can pop by, have a fly by conversation, catch them in the food room, like kind of everywhere, right? So most of that has been, you know, just little educations here and there and then individual conversations. And so I guess all the advice you're giving,

it's voluntary, it's selective, right? I mean, ultimately what the player puts in their body is kind of up to them. So is there an aspect of not wanting to be too intrusive? Like, you know, you don't want it to be kind of big brother-ish and I guess it can get that way these days with teams and pro athletes, because you athletes because it's about sleep, right? And your rest and recovery and so how much of your sleeping and that's sort of on your

own time away from the park unless you're napping, which players do these days. They're dedicated nap rooms and nap pods and everything, but it's just kind of this holistic thing, like everything that goes into your performance on the field, a lot of that is what you're doing or not doing off the field. So how do you balance wanting players to have their privacy in their own lives, but realizing also that aspects of those lives affect their jobs? Yeah. I mean, first things first, if I don't have a relationship with the athlete, that door

is closed already, right? I have to be able to kind of navigate those relationships and build them and cultivate a trust with the athlete that, hey, I know what I'm talking about. I'm here for your best interest in helping to optimize your performance. Really like it's coming from a place of love and really wanting them to succeed. So I think that's the basement. We need to foundationally be able to build

that relationship. And I just kind of nudge them in the right direction. If I come in and tell them that their plate doesn't look right, and you need to have more of this, and you need to eat your vegetables, right? Like that's just not gonna fly. They're gonna be like, yeah, all right, okay. You know, it's just not gonna work that way.

So a lot of what I try to do is just kind of nudge them in the right direction. I was just talking with one of our guys that is working through some soft tissue injury. And he had his plate and I made a lighthearted joke and he said something back and I said, yeah, maybe add some fruit to your plate. But that was like, if I don't have that relationship,

I can't make that kind of like dig. But just being able to have that with the guys is super important. And just being able to have those conversations and bring awareness. Maybe they're not aware that they're doing anything wrong, you know? Or not wrong, but that there's an area that they could improve in, right? And without me kind of like going through the checklist and again, just like peeling it back, then maybe they're not aware of that.

And I'm sure that most players are eager for this information and pretty diligent about it, given the way that players are these days and how hungry they are for information as well as food and just like how competitive they realize the game is. But if you do have a player who's not so wired that way and perhaps is resistant to this or doesn't have the most optimal habits and you're having trouble getting through to them, what can you do or the rest of the team do to try to send that message more effectively.

I think it's super important for us to understand where these guys are coming from and that some of their behaviors and eating patterns, like that's a habit that they've built over the last 20, 25 years. Like that's ingrained in them, right? So if I just come along and say, dude, you need to eat more fruits and vegetables because that's going to help you recover better. They're like, yeah, well, I haven't eaten a vegetable

for the last 20 years. Why would I start now? So then it's my job to kind of navigate that whole conversation and figure out how we can start to kind of like drip or trickle some of those things in there. Okay, well, if you're not going to eat vegetables, what about this drink that we have? So we use pure green press juices. Hey, can you, what about having a juice? You know, can you do that? You know, are you taking your multivitamin? Are we making sure that

we're getting those micronutrients in another way? Right. And just making sure that we're like fortifying them in a way that, you know, is going to help support their performance where I guess my point is that we have to be mindful that everybody's got their own habits, everybody's got their own story before I came into this clubhouse. I just have to find ways to kind of navigate some of that. Yeah, this reminds me of talking to my three-year-old. It's like, I don't know if the brewers

are taking Flintstones multivitamins, but beyond that, it sounds quite similar. How about some juice? Right, right, but there's a number of guys in our clubhouse right now that I think I've made some pretty significant progress with. And that's just being able to kind of navigate those situations and find out what works for them. Because I don't want to just push my initiative on them. I want to figure out how I can help support them and just be mindful of that. Like if we want to make a change on the mound with somebody's mechanics that

doesn't happen overnight. If we want to make a swing change that doesn't happen overnight, right? We just continually work on these things and I just continue to work on all of these things with our guys. So a decade ago just employing someone in your position would have been unique, could have been a differentiator, a competitive advantage. These days I don't know how much insight you have into what other teams are doing. You've been on a few teams in the past few years, but how much do you think these things vary or is there really an opportunity to stand out or is it more about, well, everyone's doing this now so we have to not fall behind?

There's probably an element of not falling behind and sometimes you don't want to be the last one to the party, but you do hear about, oh, this team's doing this, this team's doing that. And then you just have to research it, see if that is gonna be something that fits in for your team. Whether that's on the financial side of things,

like can we afford to do this? Is it worth it? Are we gonna get the buy-in? And you just have to kind of evaluate how those things might all fit in. Yeah, you don't want to be the last one to party or your last five to the party, but you don't want to be the first five to the party either, and just like frivolously do things. So somewhere in the middle, you know. And so you're part of a whole team and I assume there's a coordinated effort here, whether you call it performance science or sports science or their different

labels, but it's just, it's, you know, you have your trainers and you have your strength and conditioning people, and then you have biomechanics people and you have nutritionists and you just, in theory, everyone's working in tandem. So that let's say the strength and conditioning coach or let's say the, the biomechanics person identifies some, some weakness or some area for potential improvement. Maybe someone's not rotating fast enough, or, you know, you could get more swing speed out of you or something. And then you talk to the strength and conditioning coaches

and you figure out, okay, well, what do we have to change about this player's workout plan in order to strengthen that area of their body so that they can then produce that result and then you come in and okay, what can we do to support this workout plan, right? So is that how it's working? Are you kind of constantly sharing notes with other people who are part of this team that hopefully is pulling together? Yeah, I mean, ideally, it works perfectly like that, right? Like these things just kind of like trickle down. No, hey, we identified this. And then, you know, just like you said, like, biomechanics,

biomechanics, strength and conditioning, training room, me, how can I support that? I think we have an amazing performance staff here. And you know, things do operate similarly to that. Like, there's a great collaboration that we have. And it helps, I think, my background from a strength and conditioning standpoint means that I understand and can support or at least like conceptualize like what they're doing from a physical preparation standpoint. Having been through it, having a better understanding of it,

then I have a, I think a better understanding of how I can help support that. Even just understanding like the workload management side of things, understanding this change that they're making with the workload management side of things, understanding this change that they're making with the workouts, understanding that they that may be a little bit more demanding than me coming in and having a conversation with the athlete, hey we're because we're making this change, you know, I want to help support you with that, you know, we're in daily conversations

or at least like post-workout and next day conversations about how are you feeling? How are you recovering? I need to support you from the nutrition side of things. Let's increase your energy intake. Let's make sure we're prioritizing a little bit more carbohydrate and lean protein to help build that tissue. It's really fun to be able to look at all the performance metrics, see how those things are improving, or not improving, and then understanding how we can kind of be agile in those situations to just help support the athlete, right?

Yeah, I was gonna ask how you tell this is all working. What are the measurables that you look at beyond a vitamin D count? I guess, you know, blood work, but then also ultimately you want all of this to manifest on the field in some fashion, but it's hard, I guess, to isolate the individual impacts of all these things that you're doing. So how do you tell whether you're on the right track collectively? Yeah, so I mean, we do monthly body compositions. And the biggest thing I'm looking for is like, is this athlete improving or maintaining their lean muscle mass?

Right? Lean muscle mass is going to be a very positive predictor of a lot of on-field performance metrics, right? The more lean muscle mass they have, the more opportunity they have to have a higher strength level, which gives them a higher opportunity to produce more power. And that's just kind of, that's where I go to. And then obviously all of, utilizing all of the metrics that the strength and conditioning team is collecting and then maybe what in-game metrics look like

and just being able to like know that we're kind of on the right track or that, hey, there's room for improvement with this athlete. You know, like you said, like, okay, we're going to change the workout from a strength and conditioning standpoint. We need to do this, this, and this. And then again, I'm just kind of like inserting myself into a support role there,

understanding those metrics a little bit more. Yeah, I was going to ask you about this with strength and conditioning because your last year with the Angels was not a great one for the team from a health injury standpoint, right? This was, I think they had maybe the most IL placements, the second most days in games missed and you and also the head strength and conditioning coach got let go after that. And I wonder how do you tell whether that's on you to an extent? Like, do we need to change something or look like injuries are going to happen? A lot of them are, are fluky and hard to control. And then a lot of it depends on the composition of the team

and particular players. And so how do you know whether, OK, we need to change personnel or change practices, or we just need to wait till the calendar flips and hopefully we'll have better luck next time? Yeah. That was a tough go. I think we had like a couple obliques that year

and some other soft tissue injuries. But then also you're looking at like, can we stop a UCL surgery? You know, those type of things. I don't know. I mean, was there a whole lot of change from the previous year on what we were doing from a strength and conditioning

standpoint? Probably not. What did the injuries look like the previous year to that? I don't know. I mean, it's it's so difficult to say. Unfortunately, I think that was the first time that I was that I was tweeted. I don't spend much time on there, but I did get tagged or name dropped on Twitter for forgetting let go because our injuries were up. So there's a time and place for everything. There's people on the hitting side that were let go

because we're not producing offensively. There's people on the hitting side that were let go because, you know, we're not producing offensively. There's people on the pitching side let go because, you know, we're giving up too many runs, right? So from that standpoint, it's just like an evaluation that, you know, front office and ownership need to make and they identified injuries and they thought that it was, it was time for me and Matt to, to move on. You know?

So I don't know. That was the interesting one. It is. Yeah. I always wonder about that because, you know, people joke about just the coaches are kind of sacrificial limbs. Sometimes you're not hitting. Well, you change the hitting coach and maybe there's a rebound just because

regression, right? And, but you don't want to write off the capacity of a particular person to make an impact. Like, you know, you have someone like you in these jobs because you think that they're doing something, right? Or else you wouldn't want to have someone or that, you know, you can't just hire anyone. There's a particular person

who's going to be the best fit for your team. And I guess that's going to vary too. Like someone who's a good hitting coach on one team might not work so well with another team, just different makeup of players. And so it's pretty individualized, I guess. And so I don't want to write off the idea that making a personnel change could matter because, you know, that's kind of baked into why you employ these people, but then it's also

just hard to isolate that effect. So yeah, when that happened, I think Perry Manessi and the GM of the Angels, he did cite the oblique injuries. He said, you know, maybe we could warm up a little different, do some things from an Activision standpoint before games, do some other things from a recovery standpoint. Is there a perception that muscle strains, let's say, are something you can

control more, because it seems like there's more frustration if people are pulling hammies or something, or obliques, it's like, okay, this is, we could change this by having someone do yoga or whatever, right? Whereas UCLs, it's like, well, maybe that's just going to happen. Or obviously if there's some kind of impact injury, well, what can you do about that? But is that the idea that maybe when it comes to muscle strains, like that's an area where you could have more of an effect or it's more under your control or not really?

I would say yes to an extent, right? All we can do is operate with the resources and the information that we're given. Just what we were talking about before, right? Having that good loop of communication, like in closing that loop and having a holistic process where everybody's involved, I think, yeah, we can help to mitigate injury. Are we going to prevent them all? No. Right?

And to parts of our previous discussion is like, yeah, we don't know what these guys are doing when they go home. Like all of those things, there's so many things that go into, you know, guys not sleeping well, like there's psychosocial things that go into it, the environment, you know, it might have just been, you know, he clipped the bag wrong and pulled his hamstring, right? And any player that made that same foot contact might have also pulled their hamstring, right? Like those forces might have been too strong. But yeah, for sure.

I think the soft tissue injury is probably the most controllable. How much control we have over that, I have no idea. But when we have more information and more resources and we can kind of tune into how their in-game metrics are trending and what you know, what we're doing on a training side of things and how we're feeling. And when all of those pieces come together and we have more information, we can at least make educated decisions to help prevent and get ahead of it, at least. One other trope that I've noticed and we joke about sometimes is where players kind

of ping pong, they yo-yo from one goal to another from one season to the next. So maybe a guy comes in and, you know, I, I bulked up this year and I put on 20 pounds or whatever it was and I wanted to add strength. And then maybe that doesn't go great for them or the season doesn't play out the way they wanted and then they show up the next spring. It's like, yep, I, I'm all about flexibility now. It's the Pilates, you know? And it's like, I, I dropped some weight and,

and sometimes it goes back and forth again, depending on the results. And so again, I wonder if there's like a, an optimal balance there or whether you see that often where, okay, well, I didn't have a good year, I wanna change everything now and just throw out the previous plan and sometimes that's premature. Like, I guess ideally you're doing all of those things,

you're lifting, you're doing flexibility stuff. So is there a danger in going all in in one direction? Yeah, I think I've seen that over the last number of years. Like, to your point, a guy might put on 20 pounds in the off season, and I was told that I needed to hit more homers, so I went and put on 20 pounds. From my standpoint, I just think of like driving a car, right? If we make slight corrections,

we're probably going to get to our destination. But if we make big turns and everything's really drastic, we might end up in a ditch. So from that standpoint, I'm just thinking about what's a reasonable goal for the off season? How can we make some minor tweaks and utilize the data that we're given to make these changes, support those changes. And yeah, maybe yoga is a part of your off season. Maybe we do need to have you on a mobility program and maybe putting on 10 pounds of

lean muscle mass is exactly what you need to do. But these large swings and huge ebbs and flows, probably not where we want to be. Consistency in practice, consistency is going to allow us to make these small changes and give our body time to adapt to that weight gain or that weight loss or the increased strength or all of these things that go into what makes them a great professional baseball player. So I think a lot of the time, we are given a lot of information. There are these large

overhauls that are taking place and we're kind of swinging the pendulum from one side to the other. But I think if we can just kind of stay right in the middle and just make these slow, sustainable changes, they'll lead to better outcomes in general. But I definitely like, you're totally right, that there's guys that will make these huge swings back and forth.

And sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, you know, but it is, it is funny to see the, like the psyche working on, on those things. How does body composition typically change over the course of a season? Cause you'll sometimes hear players say they have trouble keeping weight on. And so they want to bulk up early in the year because the pounds will melt off. There's just so many games. It's such a grind. The weather gets warmer.

They're expending so much energy. So is there an average progression? It is what you want ideally for nothing to change between April and October. And does it typically when you do blood work or you're doing measurements at the end of a long season as opposed to the beginning. And maybe some guys are still kind of getting in shape from the off season at the start of the season, though probably less so these days because it's kind of a year round job and people are training constantly.

It's not like they're having to work second job so much like they used to at the big league level. But yeah, how does that evolve? I mean, you can definitely see that sometimes the game is what is conditioning them, right? So you might see some changes in body fat percentage. Again, back to the previous point, it's like, if we can kind of keep things kind of steady throughout the year and see some smaller changes over the course of the year, then we're probably in a good spot.

There's guys that will gain weight during the season. There's guys that'll lose weight during the season. That's kind of like my red zone. Like I don't want to see guys losing weight during the season. And you're totally right. Guys will come in and be like, yeah, I'm coming into spring training,

10 pounds heavier than I want to be. Cause I know that, you know, after the six weeks of spring training, I'm going to drop that 10 pounds. And I'm like, dude, that's not where I want you to be. I don't want you to lose 10 pounds over the course of six weeks. Like that means you're in a pretty significant, uh, energy deficit. And that means that we're more susceptible to injury. Right. And then, well, I can never, I can never, you know, hold on to my energy deficit and that means that we're more susceptible to injury, right?

And then, well, I can never, you know, hold on to my weight during spring. I'm like, okay, well, but this guy over here can. This guy actually gained weight during spring training, you know? So then that's where I need to dive into, you know, how are they fueling? How can I support them, right? And just see kind of what's going on, you know, under the hood and behind the scenes so that we can help them maintain weight during spring training. I would love if they improved and increased their weight throughout the course of the season,

because that means that we're in an energy surplus and we're probably less likely for injury. I'm not saying they need to put on 10 or 20 pounds in season, but just kind of this slow weight gain or maintenance would be ideal. There's guys on both ends of the spectrum there, right? That are playing every day and losing weight. That's where I got to, as soon as I identify that, I got to step in and try to see how I can help support them,

how we can get more energy in. Maybe that's a snack, maybe I'm making a pregame smoothie, maybe post game we're working on loading up that plate with carbohydrates a little bit more, those type of things. But again, both ends of the spectrum on that. I'm always amazed by how big leaguers seem to play through illness a lot of the time. And sometimes we see that because they'll just throw up on the mound or something, right? That happens. But I assume there's more going on behind the scenes.

And sometimes it becomes a big story like it did with Mookie Betts this spring, where he was ill for a long time and just couldn't keep food down and was dropping almost 20 pounds. And you can kind of see that reflected in his performance metrics, perhaps, even though he's put a lot of that weight back on. But when you have a case like that, a player who's really struggling, I mean, most of us would have a hard time getting out of bed

and they're out there still playing Major League Baseball somehow. What can you and your colleagues do to support them to make sure that that doesn't spiral and lead to a long-term problem? Yeah, I mean, if the athletes lose in, you know, 15, 20 pounds over the course of a couple weeks or maybe I'm not the specialist, you know, maybe I need to reach out to, you know, somebody in my network to gather a little bit more information and kind of see what's going on, obviously,

in a situation like that. There would be other people other than myself that may be involved for extreme cases like that. But just from a supplementation standpoint, where I'm going to make sure that I can support them through saying vitamin C, anything that we can do to help support the immune system, beyond what is taking place maybe from like

a over-the-counter standpoint in there, making sure they're hydrated, focusing on sleep, all of those things, just trying to tie that big picture together. Yeah, but the illness, you know, sometimes you just got to ride it out and these guys are going out there playing every night. And again, from my standpoint, just making sure that they have what they need from a nutrition standpoint. How can I help to bolster that

immune system during that time, along with, you know, whatever they're doing OTC. Some players develop a reputation for being injury prone. How real is that? And what dictates that exactly? And part of it can just be your style of play. If you're super aggressive and you're diving and you're running into walls, okay, that's one thing. But if we're talking about just different healing factors,

guys who just seem to recover more quickly than other guys or just are susceptible to the same injuries over and over, I guess how much of a track record do you need to actually reach that conclusion and not say this is small sample, this is bad luck, whatever. And then if there is that kind of history, then what types of interventions might come into play? Man, the injury prone athlete, I think it's largely dependent on like, is that soft tissue?

Right? This guy pulled his hamstring, you know, six times in the last four years, you know, probably something that, you know, we need to do on the training and treatment side of things. But then also from that standpoint, just for me, how are they, how are they fueling, right? Maybe there's guys that have aversions to eating before the game because their nerves are high. And if they're not supported from an energy standpoint, maybe that's part of the reason why they're having these soft tissue injuries. Are they hydrated enough? Are they getting enough electrolytes? Those types of things too can play a role. Sleep is obviously very foundational.

That's where all of our recovery takes place. So if there's anything going on on the sleep side of things, whether they're not sleeping long enough, whether sleep quality is poor, what are they doing after the game? How can we help down regulate them a little bit more to get them to sleep faster? Because I think that there's a lot of mental gymnastics that they're going through post-game, just trying to navigate the game, the situations, all that. Sometimes that keeps the athlete up a little bit longer.

And so just trying to figure out how we can support them post-game so they get better sleep, so that the recovery is better, so that, you know, and we just kind of like work down this line of, you know, how can we help support that guy? You know, I don't know how we define that, like, oh, this guy's injury prone per se. But you know, obviously, if there's multiple events of the same type, then we got to go back to the drawing board, right?

And try to figure out from what standpoint, like, maybe that is a biomechanics thing. Maybe there's something in the way they're moving that we can identify, that we can then support through the training that we're doing. And then the treatment and the recovery side of things. And then I can support them from a fueling, you know, from that fueling component. Just as many players these days will go to offseason facilities or they'll have their own personal gurus who work with them on mechanics, et cetera.

And ideally, you want those people to be working with or at least not in opposition to team personnel. Does that also happen when it comes to nutrition, diet, recovery, et cetera? Are there players who have their own staffs essentially or their own people who work with them over the off season? Are you involved with them over the off season? Are you then talking to those people

to make sure you're all on the same page? That's a good question. I don't think I've had anybody yet that is like working with somebody in the off season specifically on nutrition. It may get to that point though, right? Like I think that that's fairly common and on the training side of things where,

guys are going to tread, they're going to drive line and we just wanna be included in that and understand what the programming is, what the goals are and, they're going to driveline. And, you know, we just want to be included in that and understand what the programming is, what the goals are, and how they're going about their off-season process. On the nutrition side, I haven't had anybody yet. But if I did, I just want to be, you know, included in that process as well,

and be able to share what we'd been working on in season and kind of like what our goals were and where we thought from a team standpoint, we wanted the athlete from a physical standpoint, you know, moving into next year, what their goals were, and then just kind of to be looped into that process, right? Yeah. Are you involved at all over the winter?

Cause I'd imagine that if a player goes away in October and then you don't see them again until February and they spend the interim just not paying attention to anything you said during the season that's gonna undo a lot of your good work. They forget everything that we worked on that we worked so hard on. Now I check in with everybody throughout the offseason just usually on a monthly basis and just making sure that that everything's going well, getting getting updates from them and checking in on them. How's how's the offseason going? Where, you know, have you gone on any trips? How's the family been? You know, all of those things, right? Like just making sure that that they're doing well and just making sure that again, I'm just gathering information and helping to support them if they're going through any

roadblocks or if there's how I can support them in what we've discussed at the end of the season from a nutrition standpoint and a training standpoint, what those goals are and how they're kind of progressing through it. So yeah, we're in contact quite a bit over the off season and just making sure that everything's going smoothly. So when they show up for spring training, it's not a big surprise, right? And lastly, you started in the minors in 2013, right? And a lot has changed since then.

There's been unionization, there's housing, there's hopefully better conditions, much better nutrition than there was then. And I know you haven't been in your current role for that long, but I would assume that it makes your job easier as the Major League dietitian if along the way players are getting dietary advice and also good nutrition throughout the minor league system. So how has that changed or what's your sense of how it's changed across the game to the point where when players show up in your clubhouse, hopefully they have some idea of what

you're going to say. Yeah, I was really fortunate as soon as I got hired, we were able to start the process of finding a minor league coordinator. We did, she's amazing amazing. Madeline Meinhold has been awesome in being able to help support our athletes. At the minor league level, we've added an associate position. Hopefully continue to expand our performance nutrition department. If we can decrease that staff to athlete ratio a little bit more and continue to support our athletes in that way, just so that they have more resources and people to talk to and just more means to really just improve their performance. I'm excited about the future and being able to expand. But yeah, things have changed drastically, I think,

since I started in the minor leagues. They're definitely providing more resources at the minor league level. So really, like, that just looks like we just have a little bit more continuity in what's taking place in the minor leagues and being able to get them to a point where, when they do get to double A and triple A and then make the jump to the big leagues,

that there's really not a whole lot that changes once they get here from a fueling standpoint, right? And like the education that they've received. And, you know, once they get to me, then it's like a well-oiled machine and my job becomes a little bit easier in that way, right? I'm excited. Madeline's doing an amazing job, and we're just

looking to help bolster the minor league side from a staffing perspective. And really just being able to, I mean, what it comes down to is just being able to give our athletes the resources that they need so that we're coming into less of those situations where the athlete's losing or gaining or all of those things and they're a little bit more consistent in their process.

So once they get to me, they can just hit the ground running. Well, this was fascinating and there are many more questions I could ask and you have no idea how many questions about Mike Trout and Shohei Otani. I stopped myself from asking because you probably can't answer them currently, but this was really enlightening and I'll let you go because you've got to get to the park and start making some smoothies. That's right. The smoothie king. Thank you, Adam.

Ben, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. All right. Ben Clements made the point to me that to be a dietician in Milwaukee, just so many temptations, beers, brats. I should have asked Adam if that makes it harder for him to do his job, but I asked Adam enough. Now let's ask some other questions.

I'll be back after one more quick break to talk to Emery Brinkman about how he finds stats for OptaStats. Have a catch and a slog with me in a virtual rise. From small sample size, these fun facts must lie. It's effectively wild. A strange but good thing, effectively wild. All right, I am joined now by Emery Brinkman, who is a senior editor for Stats Perform and one of the brains behind the at opta stats Twitter account.

Emery, welcome. Hey Ben, nice to be on. Nice to have you on. Senior Editor is also my job title at The Ringer, but can I call you for the purposes of this podcast, a professional fun fact finder? Would that be an accurate label? Yeah, that's a properly descriptive label. Okay, perfect.

Gotta be precise about these things as you know, when it comes to fun fact finding as well. So I've had it in the back of my mind to try to talk to someone who helps run this account for a long time, because a lot of your handy work has come up on the podcast in one way or another. And we talk all the time about fun facts and qualifiers and what makes a good fact.

And I was tagged on one of your recent tweets just from earlier this week, which was a masterpiece of the form. And here it is. Daniel Schneeman of the Cleveland Guardians, is the second player in MLB history to have a multi-homer game on the road that included a game-winning Grand Slam with his team trailing and down to its final out. And then the kicker, of course, the other was Boston's Babe Ruth on July 18th, 1919. And then you have a photo of Daniel Schneeman next to the babe, just two legends of the game.

And of course, many of the replies were, what an honor for Babe Ruth. Great company here. So maybe you could just take me through the finding of that particular fact as an example of the way this works. And then the presentation, just the whole process that led to this being put out in the world. Yeah, for sure. I got it. First of all, I didn't do this one personally, but I gotta give credit to Sam. Okay. You love Sam tweets. You guys love Sam's tweets.

Oh, is Sam the specialist that really attracts our attention? He likes working late nights, so he gets a lot of these like end of game, end of day sort of tweets that you've read out here before. But yeah. What's Sam's last name? Just so we give him full credit.

Sam Hovland. Okay. He's a legend of the off the stats Twitter account. You know, you just, you start looking for things and I, yeah, I don't know how Sam come up with this one specifically, but we look for all sorts of things. We, we're watching the games, we're fans of the games, just like you are, everyone else.

And we try to find anything that's an outlier, anything that includes the first time since the Hall of Famer. The simpler it is that you can surprise someone with something simple is what we really like. And then we have this massive database that goes back to the 1800s and we can try to pick out any little things.

So no qualifier in there is too ridiculous. So it turns out well, yeah. Yeah, well, I guess we should talk about the tools available to you. And I think I at at one point, played around with the stats tool and interface, which is available to media too, right? If you subscribe to it.

Yeah. And so I think I had some experience with this years ago and know that you can call up all kinds of things on command. And it's not like you necessarily need to be writing SQL code or something, though I'm sure you can and have done that as well. But how does that tool allow you to pick out facts like these in a less labor intensive way and how granular can you get? And like, is it, I guess it's not just down to the plate appearance level, it's maybe down to the pitch level as far back as that goes,

1988, and then everything else, does that go back to the very beginning? Tell me what is at your disposal here. Well, we have this tool called Optistats Pass, which I think is what you're referring to, which has all sorts of game logs, splits. It has advanced searches of all these splits throughout the years.

There's a really good home run database because we can get home runs all time. Since 1876, we have all the home runs. Like you said, pitches only go back to 1988. There are some things we're limited on there. We also do SQL things like you mentioned. We also have our own internal stat head, if you will. We call it the internal research center, where we use the SQL queries to build out a stat head

like system that we use. And then we also use some tableau for visualizations. And sometimes I just find that's easier to pull up things than SQL. We can use all that to be creative in our own ways. There's no, there's nothing on stats pass or IRC that's telling us to like look into multi or home run games on the road.

It's like, that's where our creativity comes in. And we were like, wait, when was the last time this happened? Oh, that's a weird thing. We just kind of look at it that way. Yeah. And is there an automated aspect to it? I'm trying to recall, cause I had a stint at Bloomberg Sports, the

defunct Bloomberg Sports years ago. Yeah. And one of the things that I did there was produce broadcast notes. We had various broadcast partners. I know you've done this sort of thing too, and still do, I guess, but just the little tidbits that you might hear on a game broadcast. And I don't think that we had tools at the time that would necessarily flag these things for us.

We did use Tableau and that sort of thing. But do you have any kind of automated report that will flag things for you or is it entirely human directed? It's not like it surfaced this, hey, here's a great comp, Daniel Schneemann, Babe Ruth. But this would have to come from, I just wonder about the impetus of these things sometimes, because I guess it's just like you look at the circumstances of his Homer and then you drill down further, and here's another level and another layer, and then you strike gold from time to time and realize,

oh, he's one of only two, and by the way, the other is Babe Ruth. But that's probably hard to automate, at least now, in a way that gives it that personal touch. Yeah, you can't quite automate Daniel Schneem into Babe Ruth. I'm sure Sam saw a list, and then Babe Ruth was down at the bottom and he kind of narrowed it down and pulled out the guy from the 60s that nobody's ever heard of and stuff like that.

We do have some automated things in the internal research center, which like we'll do, if we're doing a matchup, it'll, it'll give us some things where both teams are top five. So then we can go into that or we'll have a milestone tracker, which we actually give to teams and stuff too. It's like, Hey, this guy's three home runs away from a hundredth on the all time list or whatever it is. So we do, we do have a lot of those things that are looking out for us and make us look good. But yeah, the sheet, the Schneevin thing is, is it's definitely just a Sam being creative. How often are you kind of torturing the qualifiers to produce?

Yeah. Yeah. So by Sam, Sam Miller, former co-host, co-author, he used to say all fun facts lie and that there's always some sort of misleading aspect to them. And I guess when it comes to the qualifiers, yeah, if you see a Babe Ruth

and then you try to figure out like reverse engineer, how do I get Schneeman alone with Babe Ruth on this list? And then you try to figure out a way to do that. So you're starting often from that destination almost, and then figuring out how do I get the proper qualifiers here to make this happen? Yeah, yeah, I'd say that's about it. And yeah, I completely understand Sam Miller's point,

that is, I try to keep out the qualifiers as much as possible. You want something, even today, qualified pitchers is lying because there's only like 15 of them. So you're always gonna lie if you have a qualifier, but you still need them. The best ones, like we had one before the World Series last year for the first time, and it will be history, 250 home run hitters in the regular season will play against each one before the World Series last year for the first time in NBA history, two 50 homerun hitters in the regular season will play against each

other in the World Series. So it was Judge and Otani. And that's, that's to me, that's the most beautiful one because there is no qualifier and it even, even when we, when I saw it, I was like, that, that can't be right. Like Willie Mays must've played, I don't know, Joe Mickey Mantle in the World Series, but nope, it never, it never happened when they both hit 50. Interesting, so even though I think of the Optistats account as coming up with these incredibly convoluted multi-layer,

and I say that in kind of a complimentary way for the most part. Yeah, no, we love it. Yeah, but your ideal is actually not that, it's just sort of a simple one that packs a punch. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's my personal favorite, but there are, there's many sorts of fun facts and we love each of them. Like like our children, how can you really pick a favorite style?

Yeah. We like to count the qualifiers here. I don't know whether you do this at the office. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Are, is there like a record? Do you go for a record? Cause I remember the one from last October, which was a fun one,

but we dissected this to try and figure out how many qualifiers it actually was. This was the one Pete Alonso of the Mets is the first player in MLB history to hit a go ahead homer while trailing in the ninth inning or later of a winner take all postseason game. So we're parsing each individual word here. It's like, go ahead Homer. Okay. There's one. And then I think we talked about what is Homer one? No, Homer's not a qualifier,

but then trailing in the ninth inning or later winner take all postseason games. So how many, how many can you stack on top of each other? I don't know whether you, you know what the record is or you remember any in particular that really tested the limits. Well, before I get to the record, I think the Pete Alonso one is like, you're trying to compare it to something like it was a really special home run. It was crazy. The Pujols won in 2006 against the Astros. You're trying to give it the proper context. And sometimes you look up something and you'll see another home run in there and it was not nearly as big as the Pete Alonso home run. And you're

trying to really find out what was like the Pete Alonso Hall run. Yeah. So I think that's where those sorts of qualifiers come from. The most qualifiers I've ever seen does not come from us. It was a Thaddeus Young. Fun fact, I don't, it's somewhat famous in our department and around people who do our job, but it was like 19.5 points per game, 11.2 rebounds per game, 33% shooting, 51% from the free throw line. And it compared him to LeBron James and Larry Bird and Wilt Chamberlain. Right. Yes. That's got to be the most ridiculous one that's ever hit air.

And we always try to not be like the fattiest young note. Yeah, you could take it too far. Yeah, that one is kind of famous. I've seen that sort of memed, it's semi-infamous, but funny, like you can kind of do them tongue in cheek in a way, right? Like there's a self-conscious or self-aware way to do this where you're in on the joke.

And the thaddeus young one, players with 800 games to average 13 and a half points, 5.9 rebounds, 1.4 steals, 49% field goal shooting, 30% three-point field goal percentage. And yet Magic, Bird, Jordan, LeBron, Thaddeus Young. I mean, that's art. And I'm okay with that as long as it's like, you're not trying to elevate Thaddeus Young. I mean, that's art. And I'm okay with that as long as it's like, you're not trying to elevate Thaddeus Young to that pantheon, but you're drawing attention

to the fact that fun facts lie. And that's okay, I think, if you've established that you have that tone. Yeah, absolutely. I think there was the Padres one ran one a few years ago that may have been from us I'm not entirely sure said they were 52 and 0 when outscoring the other team. Yeah we have fun with it the broadcasts have fun with it it's 162 games you gotta you gotta do something throughout the season

but whenever I meet people at a bar or you know a friend a friend of a friend or something, they're always like, oh, so you're the guy who can tell me what the batting average was in May on grass when the temperature was 62 degrees. And like, yes, yes, I can. I'd rather not, but yes, I can tell you that. Yeah, it's funny because sometimes Saber Metrics gets tarred with that too,

where people kind of conflate the fun fact finding, which is a noble pursuit in its own right. And saber metrics, which is sort of separate in a way, like the overlap is that, yeah, we're working with stats and numbers, but with a fun fact. I think the Simpsons may have even made a joke along these lines in its Sabermetrics send up episodes, but the Sabermetrician is not typically diving deep into some small sample elaborate split, right? Because that's not going to be meaningful. And that's what

you're trying to do sometimes with a fun fact. So it's a separate pursuit that I think people just lumped together into this is dorky things that you can do with baseball stats, which fair, but different goals. Yeah, for sure. If I was in a baseball ops department or trying to win a bet or something, I would use the saver metrics. I would use the larger samples, the appropriate data. Our job is really more about storytelling and doing something cool for the broadcast.

Because our clients are the TV broadcasts or like some of the PR departments or even the leagues or like NFL network, right? So they're wanting to have a discussion about this. They're not making the decisions. They're not trying to win money in Vegas or on a fantasy baseball league. Right.

Another one in this genre from last October, you all were cooking during the playoffs last year. Kerry Carpenter of the Tigers is the first MLB player. I love that. I mentioned one name and you're like, oh yeah, remember that one. The first MLB player to hit a two out, two strike, go ahead Homer in the ninth inning of a postseason game

since Kirk Gibson did it in game one of the 1988 World Series. I mean, that's just perfect. And then there's the graphic that goes with it where they're both rounding the bases and they both have their hands up just to sort of seal the deal there. Just the photo match in addition to the stat match, just chef's kiss, just perfect.

Yeah. And, and well, we didn't know Freddie Freeman was going to hit a walk off home run and game one of the world series later, but obviously didn't do it with two strikes, I don't believe. So it wasn't quite the same, but it was, it's, it's always fun, especially to get the fact as far back as you can with that data limitation. So since it was a two-strike thing, we could only get it back to 1988. And it just so happened that Gibson did it in 1988. So that's also a fun fact, whereas a lot of college football data or college basketball data only goes back to 1996.

So if we can say something's the first since 1996, we're really stretching the limits of our data rather than saying something's the first since 1996, we're really stretching the limits of our data rather than saying it's the first time since at least 1988, because we can't tell you when it last happened. Yeah. There was one, I forget whether it was this one, there was one last September where you had since RBI became official in 1920, only one MLB player has had over the course of his entire career, same game or not,

a game with 10 plus RBI, a game with six plus hits, a game with five plus extra base hits, a game with three plus homers, a game with two plus stolen bases. That one player is Shohei Otani. He did it all today. That was the one where he had the 50-50 club and had that incredible game.

And I forget whether it was that one or another one where I figured out, I thought that it was over determined that you went a little further than you had to even that, that maybe one of the qualifiers wasn't totally necessary. According to my research, at least that like it could have stood on its own with one less of those or, or the bar changed or something along those lines. Do you ever find that you take it further than you have to just in your exuberance to come up with one of these qualifiers that it's like, Oh, we could have actually cut that one or when there is a qualifier in there, is it always

a hundred percent necessary or at least that's your intent? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I got to give credit to Sam Hovland again on this one. Absolute banger of a tweet again. I think he was just highlighting how good of a game Shohei had. You could have taken out the extra base hits, but you wanted to show that five of the six hits were extra base hits.

It wasn't just three singles and three home runs. Right. So I think he was really trying to like, even, even though we could have narrowed it down, I think he wanted to like, Oh, Tony did all of this today. All of this is amazing for one game. Much, much less all of it together. Yeah. There was another one I remembered from a few years ago.

This was July of 2022. And I should say you've been in your current role since 2021, right? So you go back a bit. I actually got hired in 2014. I did take a quick break to join the Peace Corps. Right, I saw, okay, yeah. You were a research analyst for stats 2014 to 2018

and then took a sabbatical, took a interlude and then came back or you were doing other jobs on the side while working at Stats continuously this entire time. Oh no, I straight up quit and joined the Peace Corps. I thought it would be a good adventure and a cool thing to do and it was. And then I came back to Stats after that. Yeah, the siren song of the fun fact called you back. But yeah, so in your current position, you go back to 2021 continuously, I guess.

Right. But anyway, you've you've been there for a while is what I'm saying. So this was during your tenure. So one that stood out to me was there have been over 10,000 days in MLB history with 10 or more games. Today is the only one of those where nobody hit two or more homers in a game. Nobody had two or more homers in a game. Nobody had two or more stolen bases in a game. Nobody scored three or more runs in a game and nobody threw a complete game.

No team scored 10 or more runs in a game and no team won via walk-off. It's just kind of just a grab bag. What else can we throw into this statistical soup here? Was that or something like that? Does that come something like that, does that come out of like, if you're having a hard time finding a fun fact because nothing interesting happened that day,

are you like, I wonder if this was a historically boring day, and then I could get an interesting fun fact out of the lack of interesting accomplishments. Yeah, I remember when you talked about that on the show, when we tweeted it. Again, Sam Hovland, late night tweet. There's nothing that he is keeping track of that's coming up with the most boring day or the most exciting day.

He's just poking around. And the fun thing about that one was there's none of them are unreasonable, right? Like obviously in this era, the complete games are going to be a lot fewer, but like you'd think the 10 runs would have happened or like you'd think any of the others would have happened. So he was probably just poking around with some free time. He like you, Ben, he's a night owl. So just just having having to go with the stats and seeing what he could find. Yeah.

My only quibble with that one, I guess, would be just that it mixes player accomplishments and team accomplishments, which is okay, I guess. It's upfront about what it's doing there, but there's no real connection, I guess, between nobody having two or more still on bases in a game and no team winning via walk-off I guess the connection is just like again. Nothing stands out about this day, right? So just all kind of in that genre, but it's just a conjuries of statistical quirks There was also one I remember I think from around that time Tonight in MLB there were four shutout wins by scores of one to nothing,

two to nothing, three to nothing, and 13 to nothing. The last time there was a one to nothing, two to nothing, three to nothing, and a 13 plus run shutout all on the same day was on August 12th, 1890, which is just like quite random. You know, if it was one to nothing, two to nothing, three to nothing, four to nothing, which is where you think that's leading as you're reading it. Okay. And then we'll throw 13 to nothing in there. And that hasn't happened since 1890. It's, you know, it's a stretch, but look, I appreciate sometimes reaching for one of these. Yeah. I mean, some of them are going to be

stretches. Like, like you said, we, we know we're having fun with it. Our Twitter account isn't always like the most serious thing. But I think that's another one where we're like, oh, this looks funny on the daily box score or the daily like scoreboard. And you just kind of start poking into it. Probably started with the one, two and three shut out. Yes. And then like saw that wasn't rare enough. Yeah, exactly.

You're like, oh, well, you had in this 13, 1800s. That's a different number. Yeah, right. Stat head doesn't even go back that far. Look at us flexing our 19th century baseball stats. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So how many people are part of the team then? Is it like a around the clock rotation?

Who's staffing this account? Yeah, it's around the clock. There's 15 people in our department, but the company is much bigger than that. We have a sister department in Europe that does the same sort of thing for soccer. Maybe you're familiar with Opta Joe. Yeah, that's a sister department. And then we've also, I mean, I

talked to people in India, I know we have coworkers in Italy. So it's a big company, but this account is run by us 14 or 15 people. And yeah, we have staggered work schedules. Some of us are in the morning. Like I said, Sam is an evening guy. We have, I work on Sundays. Some people work on Saturdays with weekdays off, that sort of thing. OptiJo has 1.3 million followers on Twitter. So you're lagging behind.

You gotta get your numbers up at Optistats, a measly 131.7K. I guess there are a lot of soccer fans out there who knew. Yeah, yeah, it turns out it's a really, really popular sport. When I did Peace Corps, nobody knew who Aaron Judge or Shohei Otani were, but they all knew who Messi and Ronaldo were. Yeah. So your most recent tweet from this account

is also Shohei Otani related. I'm sure that, speaking of stats per perform, he performs quite well, I would imagine both on the field and in terms of virality and yeah, you probably also just have more mechanisms, more avenues of fun facts for him, but this most recent one, current MLB ranks for Shohei Otani, tied for fourth in homers, tied for fifth in extra base hits, fourth in total bases, tied for 96th in RBI. And then it's the first time any player has been in the top five in MLB in Homer's extra

base hits and total bases, but outside the top 90 in RBI at the end of any day in May or later since RBI became official in 1920. I mean, I guess these are times where it is helpful to have that tool, I assume, because looking at a day-by-day RBI leaderboard by season and also all those other leaderboards, I don't know if this is one that you are able to pull directly from that tool or whether this would require manual searching, but that's the one that kind of just gives me a headache to think of having to look that up on my own.

So yeah. Yeah, that's definitely a SQL query. Using all the tables, bringing them together because the end of any day or may or later is tough. Like the first part for a full season wouldn't be too hard to get, but to get the any day and may or later. And like you said with the qualifier, you need the any day and may or later just because I'm sure it's been April 5th and someone has done this and it doesn't matter.

Yeah. Yeah. And I assume that just comes out of, hey, he has 11 dingers and only 16 runs spatted in. That doesn't seem like a lot. And then you figure out how weird that is and try to make it sound weird. And you get a lot of mileage over the spans of performance too, which I imagine can be a headache

when it comes to processing and how long that takes to run, even with your tool. But over his last five games, the Royals Bobby Witt Jr. has 10 hits, eight RBI, six extra base hits, four stolen bases, two homers, and one walk off. You love throwing the walk off in there. He's clutch. Yeah. No other MLB player has done all of that over a five game span. And that's, you know, you have to search every five game spanned in history.

That's a lot of five game spans for a lot of players. So I don't know, does something like that take a while to run or do you have it laid out in the database in such a way that that's actually quick and easy? So the span one is we have an internal research center tool that does the spans. And while I'm sure this took a while to run, since it was every five game span in MLB history, it's not a difficult pull for us.

Okay. Like, yeah. Fancy. Yeah, so we have clients who are constantly asking us questions and stuff. So we built this out so that we can easily answer their questions, cater to those things. Or when we're doing live support, like for example, we do a bunch of Pittsburgh Pirates games.

We're on Slack with the Pirates announcers. And so we can pull that stuff up really quick whenever they ask it or whenever we think about it to try to give stuff as quickly as possible, timely as possible. Yeah. And I was going to ask a bit about your background because I know you, you go back with a team media relations departments or communications departments, and you were with MLB way back as a social media correspondent. And then with the Mariners as an intern, with the Rays,

as an intern, you were in communications with the Rockies for a little bit, and you were controlling the at Rockies PR account, which I don't know if that individual account exists anymore, but I wouldn't want to be the one in charge of Rockies PR these days, so probably for the best that... Yeah, it was tough in 2014 too. Yeah, imagine 2025. But how much easier has it gotten for you to look things up since

you're starting coming out of school in 2012 or so and I guess you even did this kind of work as a sports information intern at the University of Washington when you're still in college. So you go back a bit with this kind of research and I assume that your research powers and capabilities have improved over time, but also just generally the industries. So how much easier is it now to look up this kind of information than it was even when you started?

Yeah, oh, great question. It's wildly easier almost every single day. When I was doing stuff for the media guide at the University of Washington, I was pulling some things from memory because I had worked for the football team and I'm like, oh, we missed this long run that Chris Polk had. And I just put it in there. I remembered it from the game, pulled up the box score on ESPN. But now we have, as we continue to build out this internal research center, we just added a program the other

day that does consecutive pitches. So you can do consecutive fastballs that are strikes, or you can do consecutive curveballs thrown to left handers, or you can do consecutive pitches taken by a batter, whatever it is you so we're, we're constantly adding stuff like that. I love that one that we just did. I worked on the testing and stuff and it was a lot of fun to just pull up like, oh, when was the last time Cal Raleigh swung

at three pitches in a row? He's more of a free swinger, I guess that was a bad example. Yeah, no, that's pretty powerful. That's nice. I would like to have that capability when we're stat blasting here, una's pretty powerful. That's nice. I would like to have that capability when we're stat blasting here, unaffectively wild. What about multiple sports? Because the Optistats account tweets all sorts of fun facts.

You have one about Connor McDavid and Wayne Gretzky just recently. You have a Knicks tweet. You have NBA playoffs and NHL playoffs are going on. So there's a lot of fodder there. What percentage, like what's the breakdown in terms of your focus? And I'm sure obviously it varies by year, but at a time like this, when you have all three of those sports firing on all cylinders, and do you find that, well, is

baseball the most conducive to this sort of research and these fun facts? Did the baseball tweets perform better relative to the others, even though there's maybe more of a social media presence for those other sports or for basketball at least, maybe there's more of an appetite for it among baseball fans? Give me the breakdown of how you handle different sports

and how that's received by your audience. Yeah. So like you said, we do all the sports for like whether it's Twitter or not, where the NFL is the big client. As you hear in media, the NFL is king. So that our contract with them is huge. But we also have the NHL, we're working with NHL teams, we're working with NBA teams and broadcasts, also soccer, MLS, NWSL, the PWHL, the Professional Women's Hockey League.

I was working one of their games last night. So we're all over the place. In terms of performance, I would guess the NFL ones, I guess, do the best because it's the most popular league. But as you said, MLB is conducive to these types of fun facts. And I think the names are more well known in history, like, right? So when we can get Schneeman and Ruth on the same thing, everybody knows who Babe Ruth is, like, even if you're not, like, the biggest sports fan. So baseball, I think, is the original

fun fact sport. But obviously the NBA tweets do really well. That coverage is really popular. NHL, a lot of I's there. Yeah, right. And there's just such a long history. I mean, the NBA doesn't go back to 1919, so you can't be tweeting out NBA fun facts from 1919. And there are so many games, and it's just such a depth of information that you are,

I guess your hands are tied to some extent when you're looking up facts for other sports where it's just, we don't have this granular level of information going back as far. It's amazing what you can and cannot find. Like it's amazing what baseball has and that I can find in 1884, but we're also the department that's kind of trying to expand all those things in some senses. So NFL playoff data, our database base continues to expand, just as we just like look at old news articles and like fill in the blanks of what happened or

we play it. So we're, we're also trying to expand the databases even kind of brute force wise. Oh, I didn't know that. So you're almost in a retro sheet-esque role with other sports that don't have retro sheets of their own essentially. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there was something we were missing,

like one quarter of Nick's basketball in a 1952 playoff game. And my coworker, Jesse, found the news article about how, like that said the first quarter score and like the halftime score. We were like, yes, we completed it. Yeah. That's awesome.

And you had in a reply to that Bobby Witt Jr. streak tweet, it was a separate tweet. This is since RBI became an official stat in 1920, which is, I guess, a common qualifier that you have to use here. I don't know whether that was omitted from the first one on purpose, or someone said, oh, but RBI only go back to 1920,

or whether you wanted to keep that in a separate tweet so as not to mess up the appearance of the original Fun Fact. But I do wonder about having to specify those things, because you could specify them in every single tweet, like here's our data coverage and Thus it's only going back to because you know you could say over his last five games. Well, we don't have completes a hundred percent

coverage of all or you know Do you want to specify leagues like are we talking non Negro leagues here, right? And you know, I guess you could say on record would be kind of a blanket that would cover you maybe, but how do you approach that, you know, when there isn't a hundred percent coverage of something as there often isn't, you don't want to lard up the fun fact with a bunch of just like fine print, you know, disclaimers and yet in the interest of accuracy, I guess you want them sometimes too.

Yeah, exactly. We want to be a hundred percent certain that something is correct. But we, when we put it out there. So I know that there are some discrepancies or things that go before 1920 in RBI. So we just don't want to deal with those. Yeah. I guess we could have a pin tweet that says like all RBI since 1920, NFL passing yards only go back to 1932 or whatever it is. But yeah, you're trying, like you said, you're trying not to bog it down and you're also trying to, yeah, you're trying to make it look good.

Is there a fact checking process? Like, do you need two sources confirming? Does someone have to eyeball something when someone comes up with something or you, you know, you want to fire from the hip. I'm sure occasionally there's a misfire where something goes wrong and you have to issue a correction or take something down or maybe someone replies and points out something you overlooked. I don't know if any examples like that come to mind, but how do you endeavor to avoid that happening? Yeah.

So every time they there's a tweet, we have someone else look it over or someone else fact check it. So we have just our team group chat of like, hey, can someone look over a tweet for me, adjust the wording. I'm a big comma stickler like Meg. And so we're constantly trying to like make sure

everything is right. We're never gonna be 100% perfect, but our accuracy is one of the things we're constantly trying to like make sure everything is right. We're never going to be a hundred percent perfect, but our accuracy is one of the things we're trying to sell when we're getting new clients or retaining a client. And, you know, after working in this department for however many years it is now, it's, I remember too many mistakes, but you know, you do your best to own up to it.

You correct them. And do these tweets that go kind of viral, does this actually bring in business? I mean, it's not just for fun in our entertainment, but clients see these things and say, Hey, I want this on my broadcast and then they reach out to you. Yeah. It's, it's, it's all about like, I'm not in marketing or branding, but it is one of those like brand sort of things. And even, even if you're not a client, it's, it's, it's nice to see who's looking at it

and who's using it. And sometimes we'll reach out to someone who was using it and be like, Hey, do you want more of this or we, our clients obviously see them and use them all the time. Yeah. So do you miss it all working for a particular team, or do you think this is superior because you're working with many teams at once? And I guess, you know, if you're an intern

and you're preparing notes like this, and I've done that kind of thing briefly, I was a media relations intern for the nationals when I was in college. And so, yeah, we'd do our printouts and put out our notes and then everyone would just leave them there unread or throw them immediately into the garbage, which was humbling.

But every now and then a note makes it into someone's story and you think you did your job for something. But I guess you're reaching a wider audience this way and there's a greater universe of fun facts open to you, just all the sports, all the teams instead of one in particular games. But that can be a grind really to put those notes packets together as soon as you can after a game and then often they're just immediately discarded.

Yeah, I don't know how many minor league reports I wrote about, you know, the Durham Bulls and the Albuquerque, whoever they were. But it's, I liked working for the teams. I made great friends there. I still have many connections. But it's, it is a grind, like you said, working all those home stands. And I, I like taking a step back working fewer hours per home stand, getting to cover everything. It's a, it's a, it's fun to like

rotate between all the sports. Um, I know, I know some people, still friends who still work in baseball, but it was, it was a little too much for me. I started to almost dread going to the ballpark when the Mariners were 35 games out of first place. And it's like, I just want to go do anything else right now. And so taking a step back, I still get to preserve my joy of the games. I don't have to watch every game. I don't have to write a note about Casper Wells getting two hits in a game anymore. We can focus more on the Bobby Wits and our like a Lamar Jackson performance. And Stats does have front office clients too,

right? Like different divisions, I guess. Yeah. We give stuff to the San Francisco Giants PR people or lots of NFL teams, USS, the Minnesota Timberwolves really like us. So it's teams, it's broadcasts, it's the leagues, it's a lot of variety. But even like a baseball operations department or in the past at least, right? Like has been provided information from stats. I don't know whether you're exclusively in the media support game now or whether also there's, you know, like the people who are putting the teams together are drawing on stats data as well.

Oh yeah. Those, those opportunities come up sometimes there's, there's other departments in stats that I think they use more of the predictive sort of things. But I know some baseball operations departments have used stats pass, opta stats pass, to just pull up splits and print out sheets. I think that used to be a lot more common back before the evolution of fan graphs and baseball savant and all of that.

Any greatest hits of yours or your teams that you wanna shout out or any you're particularly proud of or any you would want back or just, you know, any that you that come to mind. Thankfully, you covered a couple that I was going to. Like some of my favorite ones are also everyone else's favorite ones. Like the, I mentioned one, the 5250 home run hitters playing in the world series against each other. I thought I'm a big baseball fan. That's my favorite sport. So I thought that was very big baseball fan. That's my favorite sport.

So I thought that was very cool. Yeah. And the Shohei Otani big game one last year, just, just how we can kind of come at it from a different angle. There was a really good San Diego Padres one. So in MLB history, there have been over 700 triple plays turned over 300, no hitters thrown over 300 sets of back to back to back home runs over 100 comeback wins from eight or more runs down only one team has done all four of those in the same season as

the 2024 Padres it's similar to the Shohei tweet it's just a fun way to think about it like the Padres fans had a ton of fun that year to hit back to back to back home runs super fun you had a great time that day if you're a Padres fan come back from eight plus runs down you had a ton of fun that year. The hit back to back to back home runs, super fun. You had a great time that day if you're a Padres fan. Come back from eight plus runs down, you had a great time. So it's just like your joy and your understanding of the season is justified because it was so cool and so unique. I do have one tweet that was a miss.

We never put it out there. It's my favorite tweet that we've never put out there. Jake. Okay. Jake burger, I believe hit a walk off grand slam last year, a couple of years ago. I wanted to do players walk off grand slams with the last name. That's a food because Jake lamb had one and Jim Rice had one, but we never ended up putting out there. There was too much debate about like, what is a food? Right? Yeah. Too subjective. I guess can't query that. Yeah, don't have a table for food named players. Yeah, we're like, is this animal edible? No, I don't think so. Yeah, lots of things can be food technically, but what you want them to be. So for anyone who wants to follow in your fun fact footsteps here, it seems like it's a great mix of skill sets

that would be boons here because you need some technical acumen and you can tell me what skills would be useful from a data processing perspective, but you also just need an understanding of sports and an enthusiasm for sports because you could have all the data wrangling skills in the world and you just wouldn't really

know what to look for, right? So you need that idea generation and then you also need the technical tools to be able to get the answer. So what would you recommend that people do if they want to be a professional fun fact finder too? I think I think the biggest part is being creative, just like reading these fun facts, reading, you know, yourer, stuff over at Fangraphs, and just being curious about, oh, this is really cool. When was the last time this happened? Or just a different way to think

about it, like that Padres tweeted. Just trying to quantify how cool Peter Lanzo's home run was. And then yeah, we do use SQL, we do use Tableau. Those sorts of things can be taught really, but the hardest thing to teach is like the, I guess curiosity is the best word. Yeah. Yeah. And I know there are people who probably think that this is all frivolous and, and why do we need to put it in these terms? Everyone knew that Peter Lanzo's home run was a big important home run. So why, why do we need to put it in these terms? Everyone knew that Pete Alonso's home run was a big important home run. So why, why do we even need to, to do this? But it just scratches some itch for us, at least we just find this satisfying. You immediately want to compare and rank.

There's just some human urge to do that. Not in all humans, but in enough humans to make that a popular tweet. So that's what you're going for. Yeah, well, this has been fun. I hope you don't mind when we occasionally take you to task for a tweet on the podcast. Not at all. Dissect into it. It's a sign of our respect for what you do when we occasionally grill you,

and you're usually not here on the other end of the grilling, but sometimes we will subject your stats to close scrutiny, but it's done from the right spirit, hopefully. And can we get you on Blue Sky one of these days? That'd be nice. Just, let's see if we can put the content probably over your... That's over my head, yeah.

Yeah, that'd be nice, just so we could see this over there as well without having to venture into the twitter waters If we want to avoid them, but we salute your work and the fine noble tradition of fun fact finding So emory, thank you very much for coming on. Yeah. Yeah, ben Thanks for having me you and meg Meg and Sam and Jeff before Meg are always very kind and I've always enjoyed listening to you guys talk about our tweets and everything else. All right, thanks to all of our guests.

After Emery and I finished recording, he praised our frequent stat blast correspondent, Ryan Nelson. He's amazed at what Ryan is able to dig up despite not having access to the tools that Emery has. Nice little game-recognized game moment. Tip of the cap from one stat fact finder to another. We are lucky to have Ryan here doing what he does.

So we heard from the man of the hour. We engaged in some brinkmanship. The Baseball Jobs series will eventually, sporadically roll on. Just wanted to shout out a post from Michael Rosen at FanCrafts published on Friday, headlined Jacob deGrom command God Michael pointed out that even though deGrom is not throwing as hard as he used to seemingly largely by design his command is the best in baseball now even deGrom with diminished stuff is still like 80th percentile in stuff he's still better than the vast majority of

pitchers but he has throttled down a tad. Intentionally, he says, though perhaps also, advancing age, post-surgery, etc. And he had a rough start to the season, but he's been better lately and good overall. And of course I'm rooting for him to succeed. And I was pleased to see this post because of my old hobby horse about hey, de Grom should throw slower. He doesn't have to throw max effort all the time. He has so many weapons. He can take the long view and still be great in the short term. Wasn't as if he was good because he was throwing super hard and he had no idea where it was going. So he needed every extra tick.

He has pinpoint command. Even before the surgery, throwing harder than he is now, his command was roughly this great. Though throwing slower might help that too. He might not be as good sitting 97 as he was sitting 99, but he might last longer. And that's what we want. Pirates manager, Derek Shelton didn't last,

but this sentence in the pirate's statement about his firing was really rich. Bob Nutting said, "'We need to act with a sense of urgency and take the steps necessary to fix this now to get back on track as a team and organization.' Well, we're all looking for the guy who did this. Why don't you act with a sense of urgency, Bob?

Why don't you sign some free agents? Give your manager more talent to work with. I don't know what Derek Shelton was supposed to do or what his longtime right-hand man, Don Kelly, is now supposed to do, except hopefully get some guys back from the injured list. Maybe Mr. Nutting will act with a sense of urgency and spend some of his money or decide that after making a change at manager, a change at owner is in order. Not great Bob. You gotta think Derek Shelton and a long line of other managers who've lost their jobs are looking at Bud Black in Colorado and saying, how does he do it?

Kyle Freeland's quote this week comparing the Rockies to the teams that have beaten them, the Tigers, the Padres, what they're doing is right and what we're doing is wrong. We're not winning baseball games. We're playing a bad brand of baseball all around, pitching, hitting, fielding. Harsh, but fair. Not that I think giving Bud Black the boot would change anything in a meaningful way,

but I do wonder how you survive quotes like that from your players, let alone the results in the standings. I guess it helps if you don't have high expectations to begin with. Nobody believes in you, you can't let them down. Life hack. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening.

Meg will rejoin me next week. Now adventure to say that what you're doing is right if you support Effectively Wild on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners,

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