Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2362: Poob Has Baseball for You

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether any of the teams that sold at the trade deadline can make an improbable playoff run, whether the Dodgers’ position in the playoff race refutes or confirms preseason fears about their advantages, and the accelerating splintering of sports broadcasts (MLB on the Poob tube!), then answer emails […]

I'll still be speaking statistically, rambling romantically, pontificating pedantically, banter and bodily, drafting discerningly, giggling, giddling, giddly, equalling, effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2362 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rally Fanagraphs, and I'm joined by Ben Lemberg of the Ringer, Ben. How are you? Okay. How are you? I feel old, but jubilant. So real, you know, push and pull. Yeah.

Fan graphs being 20 means I have to reckon with my own age a little bit. But also, fan graphs is 20, Ben. What an accomplishment. Happy birthday fangrass. 20 years ago today. It was 20 years ago today. David told the fans to graph away. How's that?

What? No. Sard your peppers? Nothing? Wow. I mean, I, I, um, I don't want to insult the proximity of that to the actual thing, but I didn't get it right away. And I am familiar with that song. All right. Well, uh, just, uh, freestyling there. That's okay. I mean, I did a bur-br-a-per, and then I went and I was like, people know that I'm throwing confetti in this, like, enactment. We got balloons on the site. Yeah, I saw that. That's fun. And you click them and they take your old stories.

That's exciting. Sean works those up. Those balloons. Well, David Eppelman, who birthed fan graphs 20 years ago today. That's right. He will be on this episode to talk to us about that. It doesn't have to make you feel old because you haven't been there all 20 years. So, I mean, you've been there for a good portion of them.

I'm a shockingly long time. Yeah. We were talking about that. that before we started recording, because I was like doing the math, I'm like, oh, wow, I'm not at a decade, but I'm getting, I'm getting up there, you know? My tenure is rapidly expanding. It's crazy. Well, Fangraphs has enabled effectively wild to survive for low these many years.

So thankful to Fangraphs for that and for all the fine reading and all the friends that I've made and who have been gainfully employed there. So we will talk to David about that leader in the episode. I thought we could start, well, with a bit of banter. And then I mentioned yesterday I had a few leftover emails. Yeah. So it seemed to me that before the trade deadline or immediately after the trade deadline, everyone was trying to identify this year's equivalent of the 2024 Tigers,

the team that would sell and then make an improbable run. And, of course, the answer was that there wasn't likely to. to be a 2025 equivalent of the 2024 Tigers, as most people in fairness concluded, the reason that Tigers team was such a big deal was because it was so improbable, because that doesn't happen often that a team does not. Makes a run like that, period, but especially after cutting bait and deciding to subtract from the roster. So there were some candidates out there.

Here we are now a couple weeks past the deadline. Yeah. And I was looking at the teams with the most wins in August, which more or less maps on to the post-deadline period. And, of course, so this is through Thursday's games. We're recording on Friday afternoon. So this will inevitably be a bit out of date by the time people hear it. But Brewers on top, of course, 12 wins. Burgers.

There's a, yes, Bob's Burgers. There's a, there's a, Glend Burgers, Glenn's, Bob's Burgers. There's a four. webs, bobs, burgers, burgers. So four-way tie for second-most wins since the deadline, nine wins. And two of the teams are two of the teams that added the most at or around the deadline, the Padres and the Mariners. So, okay, that tracks. The other two with nine wins are ostensibly sellers, the Guardians and the Diamondbacks.

Yeah. The Guardians didn't sell that much. Of course, they kept Stephen Kwan. They held on to some other guys who were potentially on the block. But they traded Shane Bieber and Paul Sewell. Two guys who had barely pitched for them this year. Yeah, that's right. They hadn't at all, but still they had potential to pitch for them down the stretch.

And they said, no. And then the Diamondbacks, of course, traded a bunch of guys. Yeah. And yet the Diamondbacks are nine and four since the deadline. The Guardians are nine in three, which just goes to show you how unpredictable everything about baseball. is and they're within striking distance now i mean the the guardians as we speak are half a game out of the third wild card spot tied in the lost column with the yankees and then the diamond backs are four and a half out of that last wild card spot in the nl behind the mats who just

cannot win a game to save their lives at this stage and then the reds who were half a game behind the Mets and have Hunter Greenback and the Cardinals are in between too. So I guess, you know, they're another obstacle. But the Diamondback seemed like they could be a candidate to be this year's Tigers just because they were sort of surprising in their not-so-goodness before the deadline. They were a disappointing team. Yeah. Whereas the Guardians, I guess, well, it depends.

If you look at the projections, maybe they weren't expected to be that great. But we know they're always there. regardless of what the projections and the underlying stats say. So are you any more confident that either of these teams could be the equivalent that is in the selling camp and then makes a run and makes the playoffs? I am not especially, but I wouldn't mind being wrong if only because, you know, to mix it up a little bit is good. It is a weird thing to root for, though, because, like, I'd be happier about it in the case of the Guardians.

And no offense to my Arizona Diamondbacks, I'm just, like, racking up teams. Like, nobody's business this week, you know, just adding rosters here. But part of what made the Tigers run as fun as it was was that not only did they get there, but then, you know, they played pretty well in the postseason. and they had this funky roster construction that facilitated that, and it was fun. And when you trade your most stable starter and then two of your biggest bats and then your best bullpen arm,

I'm skeptical that a Diamondbacks team that gets to the postseason would maybe slot into the entirety of the role, right? Which isn't to say that they don't have good players, like, you know, give me Corbyn and Cadell and Geraldo on the biggest stage. That'd be great. And, you know, Gabrielle Marino's coming back theoretically.

But I have watched some Diamondbacks baseball post-deadline. That bullpen was not good before the deadline. And now that bullpen lacks Shelby Miller and is more terrifying than it was. Now, they got, you know, some of their trades brought back players who are either big league ready or near big league ready. So it's not like there's no one that they can slot into. try to work something out

but it's not a team that I would feel confident would even get out of a wild card race now I didn't expect them to make a World Series run when they did in 23 so what do I know about anything but I'm a little I'm a little antsy about that

piece whereas I think the the guardians are a more complete team which isn't to say that they're not without flaws there's a reason they're not first in that division but I would maybe feel a little bit better about it if I were, if I were gearing up to watch that team actually play October baseball. October baseball, mostly.

And September 30th. October baseball. Overwhelmingly, October baseball. I'll say this, though, my confidence in the current cluster of AL wildcard teams, it's low. I mean, even the Mariners, it's better, kind of, but I, I mean, the Red Sox, okay, but those Yankees, it still doesn't feel good, those Yankees, you know? Those Yankees, they're still not feeling good, which is funny because, like, they, you know, if you're looking at it from like a run differential perspective, you're like, oh, you should have more confidence than them than the Mariners, but here's the thing. I don't because I want the Mariners to win, and I am indifferent at best toward the Yankees. So sometimes one's feelings grab hold of one's brain.

Yes. Well, the Mariners have multiple paths to the playoffs. Multiple paths. What a two? Yes, they could easily or not easily, but very conceivably claim the AL West title. So they've got a backup plan. And really, the Guardians, they're six and a half games pack of the Tigers and probably not going to catch them. though they have, what, more than halved, I guess, the biggest deficit that they had in that division because they've been playing well and the tiger's not so hot for the most part lately.

So that would be quite an incredible comeback and also quite an incredible back-to-back sequence if the Tigers somehow blew the AL Central leads and had a collapse mirror image of what happened last year. I'm not wishing that upon you, Tigers fans. I'm just saying that it be a great story. be tremendous content. I don't think that's going to happen. But, you know, the playoff odds at Fangraps right now have the Guardians at about a 30% chance to make it, even though the playoff odds still do not respect Cleveland very much as a team. Okay.

Don't like, don't like give it a motivation, okay? It's not, it's not respecting or disrespecting. It's, it's, it's just a cold-hearted appraisal. It's just a. I'm just saying. Yeah, there's no axe to grind, just running the numbers here. And the numbers say that the rest of season winning percentage is 478, which is not so great. But nonetheless, still a 30% chance because they're so close.

Right. And because, you know, other than, I guess, the Rangers and the Royals who are still hanging around a few games back. Yeah. Yeah, so the Guardians obviously have a better shot of pulling this off. And they sold and subtracted less aggressively than the Diamondbacks did. So it would be less exciting or improbable if that happened, probably. I'm just saying you can't say that it's disrespecting because, look, it doesn't have motivations. It's math.

It's just looking at those rosters, you know. It's just looking at those rosters. It's simbing out the season. It's just doing what it does. But you know who does have an X grind or at least did? I don't know if it's the same people. The people who run the Guardian social media really do not care for our playoffs. odds, or at least they have not historically.

And it becomes a whole kerfuffle. And I haven't seen that curfuffle because if it's happening, which I don't know that it is, maybe they've mellowed. It's happening over on Twitter. And I'm not looking over there. But I'm just saying in the past, they have gotten big mad about the playoff odds. Big, big mad. It's a good thing to use to drum up support among your fan base, I suppose.

Exactly. They didn't respect us. Nobody believed in us. And here we are. It's us against the world. It's us against fan graphs. And yeah, it's a good way to pander to your audience, probably. So I understand it. I won't say I respect it, but I guess I get it. It's mostly just very funny. We can move on from this because it's not particularly interesting radio and I acknowledge that. But it is just funny because it's like if you were making a list of teams that even in this era where every team is an analytical team to some degree, I would. adventure that you would probably still have Cleveland relatively high on that list in terms of most or least analytical. And so it's like, go, your front office is not, I'm telling you that, anyway, it's just a funny,

it's a funny thing. It's a ha ha, funny thing. Funny thing. Yeah, it's two different audiences, really, your front office and your fan base. So sometimes the Twain shall meet, but not often. Okay, so we'll see if either of those can pull this off. Most likely not, but it's something to monitor and they've at least made it more interesting in the past couple of weeks. As we are on the eve recording here on the eve of the Dodgers Padres weekend series, I was thinking, yeah, I'm excited.

This is fun. About as exciting as a series in mid-August can get. And, you know, especially the stakes are high in a sense. They're also not very high in a sense because both of these teams are playoff locks essentially. but the division title is at stake. And that's meaningful in terms of World Series odds and also just bragging rights and everything. But I was thinking of this because you know how you have had a few asides lately

about how the Dodgers have not actually turned out to be a super team and the preseason projections, fears, hype about how they were just going to blow everyone out of the water and spend their way to a title, et cetera, have turned out not to be. true because here they are still fighting for their lives in the NL West. But I guess the alternate way to interpret that is that, okay, yes, certainly they are not just cruising sailing to a title, they're not a super team, they're not setting any records here. However, they are still all but assured of making the playoffs, even though a lot has gone

wrong for them, even though they have collectively amassed the most days. and games missed to injury of any team in the majors. And even some of the guys who haven't missed a ton of time, haven't played like their best selves when they have been on the field. And so, you know, Mookie hasn't hit like himself until very recently. And Michael Confordo has been bad. And we could run down the list. It's, you know, mostly guys who just haven't been there

and getting nothing out of Rokie Sasaki, et cetera, right? So this is like, I don't know if it's worst case scenario. but it's a low percentile outcome probably for this Dodgers team. And yet, here they stand, probably still going to win this division, odds are. And even if they don't win the division, they're still going to make the playoffs. So it's like the downside for the Dodgers just about the worst case scenario is they still probably comfortably make the playoffs. And I would say if we were to attribute good faith argument, to the people who were really up in arms about what the Dodgers did this past off scene.

It wouldn't just be that, okay, they're going to crush everyone and win 120 games or something, but also just like there's no real risk for them because they've created this buffer for themselves where they could lose an entire rotation of top starters and then they have sort of like a second backup rotation that's there that can get them through. And who knows how much I know that people around. the Dodgers will say, oh, it's just like they know from the start that they don't really need to put the pedal to the medal and their season doesn't start until October, I guess, unless they actually are a wildcar team.

And then maybe it'll start on September 30th. I forget when that would start. But that idea that it was sort of 30th. Yeah. That idea that like there's no motivation. Like I was when I was watching a Dodgers game the other day, someone on the broadcast said, like, this is actually good for them that. the race is so close that they have these meaningful games against the Padres in August to kind of keep them tuned up, you know, which I'm skeptical.

You guys. Yeah, there's been this longstanding debate about does it matter if you're like winning by a lot or you actually have to like really eke it out and play meaningful games and doesn't matter if you enter the playoffs hot or cold? And mostly it seems like it just doesn't matter that much. And the season just sort of resets for all intents and purposes when you get to. the playoffs. But point is, like, this is the downside for them. If most teams suffered the same sort of misfortune or, you know, injury absences that the Dodgers have, well, they would be the Braves, let's say, or they'd be some other, they'd be the Diamondbacks, right? Like, they'd be out of it. And so the Dodgers being able to spend as much as they do, and not just the spending,

but the way that they attract players for other reasons, other institutional advantages that they have some given, some earned, basically puts them in this position where there's almost no downside risk for them and very few teams are in that position. So what would you say to that, that this is not necessarily a refutation of the Dodgers are breaking baseball, but kind of a confirmation, a validation of an aspect of that? I guess, but that wasn't the accusation, right? The accusation in the offseason was that they were buying a World Series, right? That was the thing that people were the most worked up about, right? Their ability to outspend to this degree pretty much everyone but the Mets put them in a spot where they were just going to buy a repeat of their championship from last year.

And I think that was what I took the most exception to because I don't think you can effectively do that in baseball. Now, that doesn't mean that it isn't a bummer for fans of other teams to see what they understand to be. the best players going to the Dodgers because clearly you want the best guys on your team but I just was not moved by the notion that they were going to be able to effectively buy a championship for the for the reasons that we've talked about right they have been wildly injured aren't they always you know they're like there does come a point where and I have a ton of respect for the people who work for that team I think they're good at what they do they're just going to a point where I'm like you guys are

want to try to, like, get guys who don't get hurt so much, like, especially on the pitching side? Like, is there, I don't want to call it a problem, but it's like, perhaps there needs to be a shift in focus from an evaluation perspective because, boy, do you sure get a lot of these guys, you know? And Andrew Friedman did say, like, oh, we're going to look at our process and see what that was last offseason and, you know, nothing has changed. But, but you could also say, I guess, that they have the capacity to sign a bunch of injuries starters because of the payroll because they could have 12 starters or whatever

and so if seven of them break then they'll still be okay whereas other teams don't necessarily have the luxury of doing that. Right and I think that there is like despite the fact that I think again we could ask some questions about like are you you know is there

a rebalancing that needs to happen here in terms of your risk tolerance around injury I think the place where they did really press their advantage is not even necessarily in the highest profile guys that they got, although those guys did have, you know, played well for them when they've played, but also that they had all of this depth, right? And that they were well positioned to weather that. And some of that depth, I think, you know,

you could accurately say it, like they signed externally and brought in. But some of that depth was just like, well, actually homegrown guys, you know, particularly on the pitching side. So my frustration was that the idea that the Dodgers were going to just be able to buy a championship team, what's the point of view of playing the season, it's just going to be the Dodgers, and that was being used, not by you, Ben, you're a perfect angel, but by some to say, we need to rethink the way that we do free agency, or we need to rethink the way that we can see. receive of the luxury tax thresholds or even entertain a salary cap because surely this presents this you know just like unconquerable force and like what it has really produced is a team that is going to probably have a win total in the 90s and I think the funny thing about all of that that offseason consternation was that when when everybody's preseason projections came out it wasn't like the Dodgers were projected to be a 110 win team.

They were projected to be a team with a win total in the mid-90s, which is a good baseball team. And of the projections we have this year, certainly one of the better ones, I think them and the Braves were the only teams that crested 90 wins, maybe. But it wasn't like they were forecast to be the 2001 Mariners. And by the way, they didn't win the World Series. Yeah, no, it's true.

Yeah, Fangrafts had them at 97 wins preseason, and they're on a 91 win pace right now, which, yeah, it's not that far off, really. Baseball prospectus did have them higher. I forget what the exact number was, but I believe they had the highest wind total projection from Pocoda of any team in, like, 20 years. So that was that was higher. So that was Craig putting his thumb on the scale. Yeah, that was Craig's fault, I guess. I know you did not do that.

He's famously just so optimistic about the Dodgers at all times. Not crashing out every moment of every day. No, so, yeah, so relative to the fangrass projection, I think that was a good call, I guess, so we could say it seems to have been. But, yeah, the idea that you can buy a championship, that's just always going to be wrong because of the structure of the sport. And that's, you know, maybe that's not so satisfying just to say, well, there's a certain amount of randomness built into baseball into all of these playoff rounds and everything. And so even if you are a super team, the field is still going to be favored over you. That's just inherent.

That can't really be changed. And the Dodgers themselves were a good example of that for years as they failed to win a championship. But what you can say is that you can buy a ticket to the playoffs at least. You can not buy a championship, but you can buy yourself some real certainty in terms of getting there. Sure. And even if a lot goes wrong for you along the way, then you're, still going to be sitting pretty. Whereas most other teams, they can't have as many things go wrong for them and still count on having a shot at the championship. So that much I think

is fair. But you're right that that was not the only critique or even necessarily the loudest one. Yeah. And I think that like having an eye on the general competitive balance of the league is like an important it's important to do right because you do want more teams to be in a position where they can credibly compete for a playoff spot and i think that you know the dodgers are in a spot where they flex their muscle right they use their financial might to paper over injury issues even though some of the money they're using to paper over the injury issues, like they're getting paper cuts, the guys who they bring in. And so then it's like, oh, boy, now I got an injury, right?

Like, you know, how many in and says Blake's now thrown for the Dodgers this year, right? So there's some of that to kind of cloud the picture, but they absolutely utilize the resources that they have at their disposal. And one of those resources, namely the amount of money that they are able to spend on their club, outstrips the vast majority of teams in baseball. But as we talked about during the offseason, I think that there is a much, the more pressing threat to competitive balance

in the league is not the Dodgers going all out. It's teams nutting, right? If this is your very first episode, I am so sorry. This is a disgusting, way to refer to Bob nutting that we have come up with, right? So it's like that is a much to my mind bigger threat. And I think that it's so interesting to look at the way that the playoff field has shaken out in the last little bit. And obviously we have ways to go. And I'm not saying that like every team is playing precisely to their base runs expectation right now. But like, what would you say

one of the better teams in baseball is right now? What's the team that says getting their fan free burgers? Yeah. The Milwaukee Brewers, what's their payroll look like, right? So it's not that it's not possible for you to play good baseball with much more significantly constrained payroll than the Dodgers do. You just have to be good at the other stuff. And as we've talked about, like you narrow your margin for error considerably when you are relying on that other stuff. Being able to paper over injury with money, tremendously helpful. Right? Like there's a reason that they are one of the best teams in baseball and one of the teams that is considered like the class of the sport.

But it's not impossible to do it a different way. It's just harder. Right. So I agree. Like more teams should make it easy on themselves. And some of this is like, you know, you talked a little bit. You hinted at this. Like structural advantages that are going to be, you know, aren't necessarily going to be present in every year. Like if. if Roki Sasaki just wants to be a Dodger and he's willing to not wait until he's like a true free agent to do it, well, what do you do with that? Like there's, you know, that's suggestive of personal preferences that aren't necessarily counterable with money, right? Like if Yamamoto just wants to be a Dodger because you crop a Dodgers fan, like, what are you going to do? But that's not going to be true of every guy, right? So I just, the reason that I found the whole thing so weird was that it, it seemed like it was being used as justification for smuggling in all of this stuff that ultimately was going to be to owners benefit and results in less money spent on players to address a non-problem, right? You can't buy a championship. You can construct teams that are good and do it a different way.

The Diamondbacks were in the World Series in 2023 as a wild card. team right and it's not like there's no talent on that club and they you know they've spent money since then how it worked out for them but like you know like we're freaking out because a wild and a wild guarantee was in the postseason in the world series two years ago and when that happened everyone was like this boring no one cares about the diamond backs i'm like maybe the bigger problem is that we are incapable of being happy you know and that's like a that's an us failing you know or not a failing necessarily but like that's an us problem right that's a that's a that's a a project we need to work on with people who aren't, like, front office personnel.

So I just found the whole thing to be kind of disingenuous. And mostly, I wish that people had just been, like, honest about their feelings, which is I don't root for the Dodgers, and I'm worried that my team isn't going to be able to compete with them. And that feels bad. And it's like, okay, that's totally valid. And I would like to remind people that I encourage everyone to hate the Dodgers. Yes. And the only reason that I'm still on this horse, because I don't normally, I don't even remember what I say on the podcast,

time, let alone dwell on being right about stuff. But, like, people were so nasty in our emails for, like, weeks, and it was personal, and it was so intense, and it was so bizarre. And so I am going to be on this horse, even though the people sent those emails are undoubtedly no longer listening to the podcast. Because I was a little, I was a little shirdy in my responses to them. I was. I felt entitled to that. I thought I was justified in my being like, hey now, hey I know. I'm going to throw sandwiches to you something. I don't know. It'll have tuna, so it'll smell bad. And it'll spread everywhere. We're doing two Friday shows this week. We did a Friday show on Thursday and we're doing a Friday show today. I'm working on my tight 10. Yeah. We're not actually recording both on Friday. That's impossible because we released one too early on Friday for that to have been the case. But we were just in a Friday frame of mind.

We were in a Friday. Yeah. Anyway, I hope that the Padres Dodgers series is exciting and well played. and spicy, and perhaps we will return to talk about it next week. Last little bit of news here, so Rob Manfred, in addition to seeming to intimate that there would be a twins sale, also intimated that the rights issues would be cleared up by the All Star Break, that the deals would be done. That didn't turn out to be the case, but he and MLB still working on it. Yeah, in Rob's defense, and I don't say that very often, he explicitly said in the course of that VVWA meeting that he was not going to put another estimated deadline on it. And he did, he was like, I believe you the last one. So that's not a direct quote, but it was something to that effect. So I'm not going to do it again.

So I do want to get in his defense, he said, I don't know, but I think it'll happen soon is what I recall him saying at that meeting. Usually better not to predict things I've found. But there is some reporting from Andrew Marshan at The Athletic, which makes it sound like things are developing. And the negotiations are ongoing with a whole bunch of outlets here. Netflix, ESPN, NBC, and Apple. They're all in the mix. And it's not seemingly going to be a winner take all situation where one of these companies just snout maps up all of the rights that ESPN opted out of, but it's going to be divvied up and spread out.

And so the top contenders for Sunday night baseball and first round playoff games appear to be Apple TV Plus and NBC, which in this case really means peacock. And then ESPN is still involved for a smaller part of the package, maybe for weekday games in a bigger daily digital presence, whatever that means. And then Netflix is interested in the home run derby specifically, which has kind of been keeping with Netflix wanting live events, buzzy events. Also, like, what a weird thing to specifically be like, no, we just want the derby, though. That's it. That's the only interesting baseball thing. So we had a situation where baseball was in bed with ESPN and ESPN had sent in a baseball and then a bunch of first round playoff games and other things and the derby and everything. And now it's it's just going to be a piecemeal situation. And I guess the plan is, hopefully, that the revenue will be made up. So ESPN was paying $550 million a year on average, though that was like over the whole span of the deal. So it would have been a little higher than that for the remaining three seasons that they opted out of. And so by divvying it up and all this different inventory, they're trying to reach the amount that was going.

going to be owed to MLB. And this is, I guess, the way that things work now. This is just the reality of broadcasting in 2025 and streaming. And it's not unique to MLB. But it really, it does erect an impediment to access. Because it's not a big deal to me. Because I have access to just about every streaming series, all the major ones, at least, like, between me and...

Several I have not heard of. Yes. My personal access and shared access with family and work stuff, like, you can put it on any of these streaming services, and I can find it. So it's not a big deal. I just have to... It adds the extra hassle of having to look up which app I'm opening. But, you know, that's not that big a deal for me. But for other people, A, you have the segment of the audience.

that just still is not accustomed to streaming stuff and just will not know how to operate these things and will not know where to find them, even if they can't afford them. And then you have the part of the audience that can't afford to have a zillion different things, right? And I know, you know, it's not like having cable was super cheap either to access ESPN previously.

And so we've unbundled the cable package and now we're re-bundling as, you know, everything kind of gets glommed together. or you just have to sign up for eight different things. And this is not great when it comes to, you know, it might be fine for revenue, at least in the short term. And the owners can make their money. And I guess by extension, in theory, maybe the players potentially.

But long term, it's not ideal because you're just segmenting the season and you're segmenting the audience. And we've talked about this before, but this is just like an accelerating trend, really. So even if ESPN was sort of a shrinking platform, as Manfred said, well, I guess what platform isn't shrinking these days, right? I mean, they're all kind of the pieces of the pie just get smaller gradually because there are just so many different channels and services and outlets and everything.

But also, you just won't necessarily know where to find the baseball, even harder to find the baseball than it has been to the baseball. than it has been to this point. And then what effect does that have long term? If you're not just reaching people, sort of passive viewers who just had a thing on and they were watching something else and then baseball came on and, oh, this is interesting, I'll keep watching. You're just, you're not getting that sort of discovery. And so in the long run, maybe that costs you because your fan base shrinks and you can command smaller audiences and thus smaller payouts. And maybe this is just the way of things.

I'm not saying that there's necessarily a better option for MLB here. Like ESPN opted out of the deal. So MLB is just trying to find the next best option, basically. But it's not going to be as good, even if the money ends up being similar. Did ESPN opt out of the deal? Yeah. Yeah. And MLB then subsequently said, like, well, we weren't happy with the deal either.

Right. Okay. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. And, you know, that was probably partly face-saving and probably, be partly also genuine discontent about... You can't fire me, I quit. Right, yeah.

And ESPN clearly deprioritizing MLB, and so I'm sure MLB legitimately had some gripes there, but would it have opted out unilaterally? I kind of doubt it because of all this hassle of trying to piece together the same revenue from places with smaller reaches. I'm mindful of the part of it that isn't their fault, but...

And you're right. I don't want to take for granted that there's, like, a better consolidated option for them on the table that they're, like, stubbornly ignoring. I will say that it is the behavior of a man who is not going to have to field phone calls about how to find his baseball from people over the age of 50. And I have respect for those folks, but, like, I have to help. You might get some emails to Rob Minford's email account, which people send us. stuff. I'm sure it's true. Yeah. It's like, hey, you know, some of us are the go-to, how do I log into this person? And then how many times do we have to field that call, you know? So a lot of times potentially, although, you know, jokes on me because sometimes I have to call my dad and be like,

how do I find this thing? Because he works in tech and he knows how to do it and I don't. So, you know, it isn't always a clean generational split. But I do worry about it. I worry about people being able to watch the games they want. I worry, particularly when it pertains to the postseason, which is like this very special time of year where we're all watching the same stuff, even if that experience is mediated through social media and you're not always in the same place. Like the conversation, at least in the coverage, is all kind of the same, right? We're all reacting to the same games. We're thinking about the same kinds of questions. And I think that as you have fracture across platforms like this, the odds of us maintaining that sense kind of, they dim

some. And I do think that people, you know, people like baseball and they want to watch postseason baseball. And I do think that consumers are getting savvier about how to navigate this stuff, right? Like, I'll sign up for a month and then I'll cancel. But it's, it's work. You know, you're introducing work to an experience that I think was pretty easy for people before. Now, a lot of these streaming platforms are set up such that, like, if you do just have linear cable, you can use your linear cable login to, like, access stuff on them. So maybe some people will just figure out how to do it, and then it'll be fine. But, yeah, like, Peacock.

Like, I mean, some of these, again, like you, a lot of these, I already, I already subscribe to. Or I'll be fine to, like, sub for a month. and then cancel. Although I continue to think that you're making up platforms sometimes and just seeing if you can slip up past me. Yeah, there's a viral tweet about that, right? Oh, yeah. Made up fabricated streaming services.

And no, I have not done that. But it's true. I'm an Apple TV Plus devotee. So you can put baseball on there. That's fine. I like the picture quality of it is always nice. Sometimes it's alarmingly nice, like kind of clear in a way that's like uncamined. I know. But it's been an issue for other leagues, other sports. Like MLS goes exclusive behind the Apple TV Plus paywall. And then they get a big payout. They got a lot of revenue. But then there's discontent about that because people aren't coming across. It basically just, it limits you to what your existing audiences, because not that many people are going to find you otherwise. And you're not getting promoted on other major media outlets because they have no incentive.

too because they're not rights holders anymore and the product is on some other service and so why are they going to give you free publicity basically and so you just kind of lock yourself into either a static or dwindling audience and then that's maybe bad for the long-term health of your sport so yeah it's not ideal but maybe maybe that's just the world we're in and maybe there's some way out of it if manfred is able to package together enough local rights to make it a lump thing but then again if it's like a lump thing where one streaming service it's like watch the entire MLB season on peacock you know it's like how many people are actually going to do that yeah how many people are signing up for the lump I hope he calls it

something else I don't know that's very appealing you know ah I'm watching uh twisted metal on peacock so there's that making that up it's not that's not a real yeah it's pretty good yeah I thought that you were going to say earlier in this conversation that last time all I wanted to talk about was the Gilded Age. And guess what? Still do. Still would prefer to be talking about the Gilded Age. Not because baseball's bad, but just because it's in my brain, man. Yeah.

I think the original version of that meme, I forget, whether it was Tumblr or Twitter or copy pasta from somewhere, I don't know. But it was like, have you seen the new show? It's on Tubu. It's literally on hippie. It's on putti with ads. It's literally on Dippy. You can probably find it on Wino. Dude, it's on Gumpy.

It's a Feebo original. It's on Poob. You could watch it on Poob. You can go to Poob and watch it. Log into Poob right now. Go to Poob, dive into Poob. You can poob it. It's on Poob.

Poob has it for you. Poop has it for you. Dive into Poob. I don't even remember if that was the original version. But you get the point. Yeah. Dive into Lump. Right.

So the leftover emails, just three. Here's one. from Matt, Patreon supporter, who says, we may be seeing something unprecedented with Roman Anthony last night. This was a few nights ago. He became by far the youngest post-integration player to walk four times and Homer in the same game. The sample is still tiny,

but the on-base numbers are quickly becoming Soto-esque. I know predictions aren't an effectively wild favorite, but if you had to put a percentage on the chances, he finishes his current contract with an on-base percentage over 400. What would it be? As a 20-something who grew up idolizing Mike Trout, I can't help but approach long-term projections with some healthy skepticism,

but Roman just profiles so ridiculously well and the contract will presumably not include any of his decline years. Soto, Judge, and Trout are the only active players who meet this threshold. So, yeah, it's true. It doesn't take him that deep into his career because he is so young.

He's 21. He's a fairly young 21. So this isn't even declined phase so we're just saying like will peak roman anthony basically and whatever he's now if he is not yet peak roman anthony will he have a 400 plus on beres percentage it's it's certainly not far fetched no i mean i think that the thing that is working against him potentially is just that we don't have i mean we have minor league translations we just haven't seen him in the majors very much but like he's put together well

there have been times in his career as minor leager where he was like discerning to the point of people worrying that he was passive at the plate but he has a good eye he's not swinging at junk and yeah he's he's young he's young enough that like even if he loses some time to injury he's probably still going to be mostly

in his prime for the duration of the contract I don't know how I would ballpark it specifically but seems possible to me it does not seem ridiculous to assert that. So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe. Yeah, he's at a $3.99 on base percentage now in his rookie season at 21.

And he has a track record of doing this, basically at every level. Like, this was the kind of player he was. And obviously, it wasn't just like scouting the stat line. He was the top prospect in baseball, certainly. So, you know, scouts agree. as well, like when he has a track record of doing it, being young for his level everywhere he goes, and scouts agree that the pedigree is there, and now the Red Sox have committed to him long term, and he's in a decent park for hitters and all the rest of it, then, yeah, I mean,

the thing that I guess goes against him is just the environment in baseball right now, And the fact that 400 on-base guys are pretty few and far between in this era. So when the league on-base percentage is as low as it is because the batting average is as low as it is. And so 316 MLB average OPP right now, well, that's tough. Like how many – in fact, the only qualified hitters now who have a 400-plus on-base percentage are will Smith and Aaron Judge. Wow. Even Juan Soto doesn't because of his slow start.

So that's the reason why it's hard. It's not like I have any lack of faith in him, but it's just we don't know. It's challenging, yeah. Yeah, we don't know which way the league-wide stats are going to go for all. We know it's going to dip lower. I guess I'd bet on it rebounding just because it's near historical lows, batting average, for instance. And so you might bet on a bounceback or you might bet on MLB, put it. putting its thumb on the scale and engineering a bounce back of some sort.

So you could, I guess you could project or forecast that at some point in the life of this contract, the offensive environment will recover somewhat. Sure. And scoring will rise and on base percentages will rise. And maybe even maybe ABS helps a little bit or you go to full robo-umps at some point. And maybe that helps even more. Who knows? So, yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

I guess if it's something that only two of 162 qualified hitters are doing this season and you're asking the odds of him doing it over several seasons, I guess it's, the odds are against it, I guess. Yeah. But I don't know. I guess I might put them pretty high. I don't know. 25%. I don't know.

You take the over or the under on that. I'm not sure. I'd take the, I guess I feel compelled to take the slight under, but I don't know how much conviction in that selection I really have, you know? Yeah, now he does have a 387 babbip currently. Yeah. Although he was a pretty high babbip guy throughout the miners as well. And his weighted on base is basically the same as his expected weighted on base, and he's in Fenway and everything. So, like, you know, maybe he'll just be a high babbip guy, which will help him. And he is walking a lot.

of course, he's also, he's struck out more than you'd like. I mean, he has a 26% strikeout rate with four homers and a 161 ISO, so he hasn't had much over-the-fence power on the hole. He's got some doubles, it's Fenway. But yeah, like, you know, if he gets the strikeout rate down and his chase rate has declined as the season has gone on, which seems like a good sign that he's maybe already acclimating, adjusting, improving. So, yeah, he's got about as good a shot as as anyone, you know, aside from Soto. I mean, I understand the Soto comparisons. Of course, Soto was doing that at like 19.

Right. So he was even more precocious and a prodigy. I mean, he had a 406 on base in 2018 as a rookie in almost 500 plate appearances, age 19. And so, yeah, he was really something in Stokes. But he has never failed to have a 400 plus on base in a full season. and I would expect that he might end up again over there by the time it's all said and done, even though he's only got six weeks or so left.

Yeah, I think that's right. Roman Anthony, really good player, really good prospect. Really good player. Yeah, breaking news here. Okay. All right. Greg says, I'm watching the Dodgers play the Angels. Andy Pahas drew a basis-loaded walk to tie the game.

And Eric Caros said, and Pahas drives in a run with a walk. Hmm. I would accept walked in a run. But drive is a bit too far for me. What say you? An extreme baseball pedant, not us, of course, might take issue with the fact they're credited with a run-batted-in. Now, as a stat to record that they caused a run-to-score fine, but a batsman who walked was rewarded specifically for not using his bat.

This second one doesn't really bother me much, but perhaps there's a term out there that is more accurate than run-batted-in, such as run-driven-in, perhaps, which was the first question. question. Right. This is the tricky part of it. I agree that driven in in that context seems wrong to me. Because like you hit a, like it's a deep drive, you know, like you're not, but you're right. Driven in. I don't know. I don't mind it. You, you caused it to be driven in. Yeah, but you didn't. You didn't drive a ball. Right. But you still drove that runner home by walking because you walked it's such a ridiculous sentence in any other context so you drove him him by walking i'm okay with it we scootered him in yeah and we we biked him in you were rewarded for not using your bat i guess in a way but you had to have a bat up there or else they probably

you wouldn't have driven you wouldn't you wouldn't have gotten a walk if you didn't have a bat up there they'd be like no i know there's the the john boyce side hypothetical about what if Barry Bonds didn't even have a bat, like what was on basebers? But even if Barry Bonds didn't have a bat, then I think they probably would have thrown more pitches in the strike zone. And he would not have walked nearly as much. So he had to at least stand up there with the bat, with the implied threat that he could swing. And then, yes, of course, it is then having the judgment not to swing at pitches outside the strike zone that enables you to walk. But isn't this just going along with the historical bias again?

against the idea that drawing walks is a skill. And so we're making it lesser somehow because we're saying that you can't use the same terminology as if. No, it's just that the terminology means a different thing. You know, it just means a different thing. We can glorify the walk. We can respect the walk, but we don't need to have confusion. It inspires confusion to say you drove it in. I just, I get, I don't think that it's like technically wrong, but it's just not when we use that terminology.

We use that terminology to imply what a guy is doing with his bat to the ball more than, right? Like a line drive. Yeah. Like a deep drive. I think it's like a different usage of drive sort of. I don't care for it. You know, I drove you to do something. He was driven mad.

Like, you know, you can, you can be prompted to have something happen without. literally like driving a car or driving a ball with your bat or, you know, there are different contexts in which drive makes some sense. So I'm actually, I'm fine with this. I'm actually okay with this. He did. He drove in a run because he went to first base and thus the bases were loaded and the runners had to move. And so his walk drove in the run. I'm okay with that. I'm even okay with saying the run batted in because he was a batter. He was batting. Right, yeah.

He was at bat. I'm less stressed about that. Granted, it's not an at bat. It's a plate appearance, which I have been pedantic about, and I'm a stickler for that one. But you're still a batter. You're batting, even if you don't use your bat ultimately in the action pitch, the outcome pitch there. So I'm okay with not only giving you an RBI, but saying that it was a run batted in. And I'm also, I think, more comfortable than you are with saying driving in the run.

I don't like that. I don't like driving in. Okay. All right. Is there something that you would prefer to say? Because you can say you drew a walk, but you probably wouldn't say he drew in a run, right? He walked it. Well, yeah.

When you say he walked in a run. I don't know what I would say. He forced in a run? I mean, that sounds. more kind of like the pitcher is doing it than the batter to me, but yeah, I don't know. I'd say he, he drew a walk. And a run scored subsequently. Yeah, that's what I'd say.

He went to first and the other guy ran home from third. He drew, wouldn't you say he drew a basis loaded walk? Wouldn't you do that way? And then it implies the run scores. A run scoring walk? A run scoring walk. Mm-hmm. All kinds of things.

And you notice how we didn't use the word drive at all, even one time. Oh, we just got a just got an email in response to the pedantic question about when runs score exactly. And Justin says with regard to the question of if a game is technically tied when someone hits a go-ahead Grand Slam, I have definitive proof that all the runs are acknowledged at once. Okay. If you are batting down one in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and you hit an over-the-wall grand slam. This is beautiful. This is so smart. walk off as soon as the go-ahead runner, the one who had been on second touches home.

Instead, the final score reflects that you have won the game by three runs. I think in light of this, you can't say that the game was tied in the hypothetical post-it. I think that that's right. I will say in fairness, like there are particular rules here and they are a little bit goofy because let's say that you got guys on base, multiple guys on base. It's the bottom of the ninth. and you hit a double. They stop counting as soon as the winning run crosses the plate. They stop counting.

They don't let everybody keep playing the – they just stop. But with a home run, they all score. Yeah. And so, like, it's like, we can kind of arrest the play mid-go in particular circumstances, which is, you know, you've scored enough runs to have won the game, and so we are done now. So I have to acknowledge that as a reality. That is a weird, weird rule, weird little inconsistency, which I think we've talked about before. Right.

But, yeah. No, I'm sticking to my guns on this one. I just don't think you can get to a score without having passed every intermediate score. However briefly, I think you have to count sequentially. It's linear. It's not a lump sum. But ultimately, I think we more or less agreed. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. All right. And last question. This is actually Soto related, and this is from Robert, who says, I'm curious if once Soto calls his career over, will his total war be more than all the guys traded for him put together? Only the direct guys, not the next tier down. Like if McKenzie Gore gets traded and whoever his team, Washington gets back, not those guys. So not like the Juan Soto trade tree, just all the proceeds down.

Right, the guys he was directly traded for. Yes, involved in the same transaction. So we're counting only those guys, but he has been in multiple trades. So it's still a fair amount of guys, right? So it's just the guy's baseball reference list, as Robert says, Harleen Susanna, C.J. Abrams, McKenzie Gore, Robert Hassel III, Luke Voight, James Woods. No, not James Woods. He wrote James Wood.

It's Jay. He wrote Woods. It's Wood. I ran right into it James Wood And then you drove it in Yeah Johnny Brito

Kyle Gashioka Michael King Drew Thorpe and Randy Vasquez Oh Michael King Soto will DH at some point And it's not like his defense helps him anyway with war Yeah that's

singularly this year really bad No it's been rough That's the ongoing saga Of Juan Soto's defensive stats which maybe maybe they've ended up on one side of the ledger lately. But for a while there, it was really ping ponging back and forth. I started thinking, that's a lot of guys.

Can one guy outwar that many? Well, maybe just look at the war accumulated while on the specific team they were sent to. Oh, okay. That makes it more feasible in my opinion. Yeah, so CJ, so point one war with San Diego, that wouldn't count toward his total because only the war accumulated while with Washington should since they traded away Soto and care about winning the trade and so C.J's performance with them is what matters

and would cease to matter if he was traded. This brings up a funny circumstance with Drew Thorpe. He was sent to San Diego by the Yankees in the second Soto deal but never played with the Padres and didn't gain any war with them. So contrary to the next level down clause in the above prompt, should we count the war of Dillon Cis, whom San Diego got from the White Sox?

Probably not. I did a quick check, and the guys in the trades, while with the Padres or the Nat specifically and respectively, total 29.9 war, and Soto is at 40.7. But I guess that's, okay, so that's the career total for Soto, not since the trades, I guess. So that's, so I guess we're talking. Okay, so career war for Soto, even prior to the trades. And that's what we're comparing here. So 29.9 for the others, Robert says, I haven't double-checked the math. and Soto at 40.7 seems likely given C.J. Gore and not Woods, but would, being decent to good and young, plus King and Vasquez. So I guess if it's that close already, if it's only like a 10 win edge for Soto rate, if that's accurate, then, and Soto's got a long road ahead of him, obviously he's going to accumulate many more wars. So it's not really a open and shut case here. But that is a lot of players.

I mean, Wood seems like he could be a superstar. And Gore's been very good. And then Abrams and King. Yeah. And he's been great this year. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually, it's a good question.

Like we could probably get the rest of career zips or something and actually stat blast this somehow. But do you have a gut sense? Like, can the field, can this accumulation of players make up about 10 wins above replacement on Soto over the next however many years? I would think that they can. I think there's some good players in there. I mean, he's going to keep accumulating as a problem. But, you know, would I believe it if you told me that one of those guys, like, popped a.

an awesome season out of nowhere, or maybe not even out of nowhere, but like, particularly because so many of them play actual and defensive positions. I mean, I mean, Abrams isn't a very good shortstop, but like, I think James Wood is capable of that, you know, like, could I, could I see him sort of tipping the scales in favor, particularly because you have like, and you have guys who haven't even debuted yet, like, Susanna's in that group. I don't know. I think it's possible.

I think it would be challenging, but it's also so many guys that maybe not. Yeah. And I'd like to think that Soto would be a hitter who will be productive for a long time because he's just, he's so smart about hitting and he's just got such a great eye and everything. But I don't have a whole lot of confidence. I don't have a high degree of confidence in like projecting that this player or that player

will buck the agent. curve trend. Sure, yeah. Because I've been burned by that before. Oh, yeah. Like, and, you know, I thought, oh, Joey Votto, he's such a cerebral, just a smart hitter, and he's looking at all the stats and everything, and he'll just be able to fight off father time forever. And, you know, that that didn't exactly happen, though he had his moments.

But, yeah, so, and yeah, it's much more certain that Soto's not going to be adding anything defensively from here on out, probably. So whether he continues to be a bad corner outfield or. for a while or just D.Hs, and he could be very valuable as a D.H because he can be such a great hitter, and he could be a great hitter for another decade. So he could easily, you know, he's got 40 war to this point. Like, he could, and that's just in his age 19 to 26 seasons. So ideally, hopefully, he more than doubles that. But who knows? So, yeah, like probably his his rate of war accrual will slow, just because, like, the base running and the defense is not going to get better.

And his bat was, like, so mature and polished early that, you know, I still feel like, well, I guess last year was kind of the year I was waiting for with Soto, like, other than the shortened 2020 when he was great. Last year felt like the year went, ah, okay, this is, this is it. This is, like, sort of his offensive ceiling or something close to it. And so, you know, probably we've seen about his best on a single season basis. And you just kind of hope that he keeps doing that for as long as possible, which he could. But yeah, I guess I lean towards saying that he'll be caught, but also not with a ton of confidence. Yeah. So we just said, dangerous to predict things and very dangerous to predict things and actually think that you're right.

So let us take a. quick break, and we will be back with your boss, David Appelman, founder, CEO of Fangrass to talk about 20 years of the site. I don't want to hear about none of the eyes, yeah. Tell me about some prospect I should know about. A fake, a fake, a big, Disney wild. A fake, a fake, David Wild. A fake, a fake, a fake, movie wild. A fake, a fake, definitely wild.

Well, we're joined now by David Appelman, founder, proprietor, and Dark Overlord of FanGraphs, who is here in honor of the 20th birthday of Fangraphs. David, welcome and happy fan anniversary. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Rank your creations in terms of how much they mean to you, Fangraphs and your two actual children. Starting off with a softball Yeah

I do I have jokes with my wife that FanGrafts was my first child Yeah But the kids are definitely one and one And then FanGrafts is two All right Sounds like a cop out to me

Very very diplomatic Very diplomatic When we play this back for them 20 years from now They'll be like wow dad He really knew what he was doing Yeah Your kids are young

How much have they accomplished in life at this point, really? I mean, compared to Fangraphs, which has redefined the baseball analytic space. Your kids have a large legacy to live up to with your firstborn fan grafts, your eldest. They have more potential than I do at the moment, I think. So you never know. Yeah. Well, we want to have you share the origin story, which you told briefly in your post for the anniversary on Fangraphs.com. And maybe you also shared in some form when you joined me and Jeff on episode 1321, way back when.

That was before Fancrafts even turned 15. But the origin story hasn't changed since then, but our audience has. So for those who don't recall that interview or weren't with us, then, how did FanGrafts start? I was playing a lot of fantasy baseball in 2004, 2005, and I was working at America Online. at the time. And I was, I put together these big packets, like these big PowerPoint decks for executives that were full of graphs. And I thought dial-up was short-lived in terms of its future. I guess I was not right about that, given that dial-up was shutting down, I guess, next month for AOL. But. Yeah, R-I-P. Yeah. But there were lots of layoffs going on at the time.

And I thought that maybe I could translate what I was doing at AOL into baseball stats. And one of the things I did at AOL was with this packet of graphs, I kind of automated it down to more or less of a button play. So I did have a lot of free time to manage my fantasy baseball teams and read baseball analysis. So it kind of freed me up. And then at some points, I got in touch with baseball. solutions, they got me a data feed, and then I worked on it for about three, four months, and launched fan graphs with 10 graphs for every player. The famous graphs.

Yeah, the titular eponymous graphs. The graphs were there from the beginning, but it sounds like there was sort of a slow start. And you actually mentioned in your post that things changed when you got writing to go with the graphs. And they've been sort of a in a symbiotic relationship ever since, I suppose. So did you think at the start that the stats would just speak for themselves and that that was all you needed? Like had you envisioned that there would be an editorial side of the site and you were just building up to that? Or did you just realize did it dawn on you that you needed someone to sort of use the stats and share the stats and create content around the stats? Well, when I started the

site. I was actually writing for the site. I wrote this series called Daily Graphing, which tried to explain how to use all the stats. There were very short posts, but I wrote them every single day. I did not include any of them in any of the greatest fan graphs posts. Not one. It was really difficult. I honestly don't know how it's just, you know, some people can do it. I could not. And so I did envision writing with it, but I guess initially I thought envisioned me writing, which was not a good idea. So getting Dave on board. And then I think, I think in that first, in that first group, it was Dave Cameron, Eric Seidman, and then also Mark Hewlett. Those were the first three fan graphs writing hires. I'm curious kind of, and we went back and

forth on your piece a good bit. And it's hard to distill 20 years of history into, you know, a thousand word poster or whatever. I think of some of the big shifts in terms of the site taking a step forward as being related to who you hired, right, bringing Dave on board, eventually, you know, folks like Carson and Jeff and Eno and the fantasy folks joining the site. And then the introduction of what was win value at the time and became war is another big marker where it's like, okay, we're doing something over here. When did it dawn on you that maybe you didn't think you'd get 20 years out of it? But when did it start to seem feasible to you that like this was a going to go in concern? You know, you were going to have something to say about

baseball and people were going to look to the site to have some sort of authority about what was going on in the game? I mean, I think after war was launched, people really took notice and it made a big difference. And then also, I mean, I think with Dave and Jeff and Carson, like, and, you know, I think like a lot of the voices of the site became a lot more mainstream. And they were read in front offices and by people in baseball and by other baseball media. I mean, honestly, I think a lot of like the site's relevant, like the majority of the site's relevance has to do with the voices at the site and how they've utilized the data and made the data accessible. worth having part of like everyday baseball discourse. I mean, in terms of like, did I think fan drafts was going to get to 20 years old and be relevant? I mean, I don't know. It's just, it's like one of these things where you just kind of keep doing it.

And then you're, you find out you're there. So it's kind of strange to look back. Like, I think with the exception of early on, I don't think. think there was ever any time where I was like, I'm going to stop doing this. And then as we got more people working for FanGraph, I felt more of a responsibility to make sure that people were still, could still have jobs. So, like, even if I wanted to go do something else, like, I couldn't. And I don't. Like, I love, like, I actually really enjoy doing what I do at Fangraph still. Like I think, you know, I wake up every morning excited. I check Slack. I make sure the

fast load. Like I enjoy like the majority of what I do at Fangraphs still. And I think it's, I don't know, you know, like any job there are parts you don't like. But I think it's, I think it's become more enjoyable over time. Like I think there's, you know, when you're first starting something, I think you get very into it and you want it to succeed. And then I think, at least with fan Naturally, there was, there were some points where it just became really hard, and I think all of us at Fangraphs kind of powered through, and I feel like we're in a really good spot now, and I feel really good about the powering through. You've weathered many departures of people who have gotten snapped up, not just by other

media organizations, but by teams, of course. And so two questions I had for you, which you can answer in whatever level of detail you're comfortable with, how close did you ever come to going to work for a team? Was there a team that said, I want fan graphs for myself. I don't want all the other teams to read this stuff. I want this guy who built the fan graph stat pages to build our internal database and we'll just hog all of this data. So there's never been a team which wanted to buy fan graphs and just take fan graphs off the market. Like that hockey site, I think, which was purchased by the cats, maybe. So that was never like something that anyone was interested in doing.

Personally, very early on in maybe 2006, I was interviewed for a Yankee's job, which I think at that that point, if I had gotten, I almost certainly would have taken, and there wouldn't probably not be a fan drafts right now. But apparently I didn't finish very high in that job search. That worked out for the best, probably, for a lot of people you subsequently employed. Yeah, it was cap-friendly, was that site that the capitals bought last year, I think. Yeah, anyway, one person leaves, another person comes in and it was difficult, I'm sure, to lose Dave Cameron and Carson Sistoli, but then that worked out well for Meg, and it worked out well for you because you got Meg, so it all works out, I guess, in the long run. Okay, related question. Have you ever

come close to divesting in some other way? Has some other media entity ever, you know, you've partnered with various companies over the years? Was there ever a conversation, were you ever tempted to pass this along to someone else and cash out and move on? Honestly, no. There's been people who have been interested over the years, but no one, there's never been an offer, which has been sort of the ballpark of what would even make any sense. And so, like, there's, there's been a lot of, like, mildly insulting offers over the years. I mean, it would have to be, there would have to be a lot of boxes to check to make sure that, like, the integrity of the site and sort of what has been built is sustained in, like, a way that I think is true to its vision.

But I think on the other side of that, that's also not very realistic. So I think the likelihood of that happening is very, very slow. You're stuck for life now. I mean, some amount of money is going to, you know, I'm not a crazy person. But, you know, I've never shopped the site around. You know, I'm very happy just like doing what we do. And I think with different ownership, I think it would be very different. Stop low-balling Applement, everyone. Insulting offers.

We occupy this really funny little niche because, like, we are. I would like to say, but we are still small, even though our full-time staff has grown pretty dramatically over the years, at least relative to when you were starting out. And I think people have this weird perception of Fangraphs as having like a huge staff. And then they are often surprised when like they send a support email and you answer it. Like the CEO of the company is answering the support email. But if you didn't have to worry about the support email, but if you didn't have to worry about the constraints of operating a media company if we weren't trying to navigate, like, advertising and membership, and we just had limitless budget.

Is there anything that you would want to do with the site that, like, we're just not maybe positioned right now to do, but hopefully sometime? But what's the big project, the White Whale, that has alluded you up until now? This might not be an answerable question, but try. I mean, Fangraph is a baseball site, but I mean, I think anyone, who talks to me knows I'm also a really big tennis fan. Yes. So, like, maybe off somewhere else there could be a tennis grafts.

I don't know. I also don't like the idea of doing other sports, so I feel very conflicted about that. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure. Yeah. Meg just offered you a blank check, any amount of money in the world. And you said, maybe we could cover tennis. Well, I mean, if we had a blank check, I mean, Like, in reality, what would happen is we'd get more developed first.

We'd hire a bunch of people. That's what would happen in reality. Since we were talking about the symbiotic relationship between the stats and the writing, I was wondering about the stats side of it because I think a big part of what contributed to Fangraph's rise was that the stats were just so accessible and navigable. and I worked for baseball prospectus for years, and I could not have said the same about that site at the time. And baseball prospectus had warp before Fancrafts had war, right,

and had warp and all of these other things. But A, they were paywalled, and B, they were just difficult to navigate and kind of wonky and just, like, limited functionality of the site, and that was just a struggle for years. And I love baseball prospectus and enjoyed my... time there. I actually, I tried to split. I tried to play both sides. I tried to write for fangrass and baseball perspectives when I left the Yankees, but that didn't work out. Not because of you, but more because of BP. Regardless, this is a podcast about your history, not mine.

But I think that had a huge part to play in the popularity of the site because everyone could find things and use the site. And it was just there and it worked, you know, and lots of powerful functionality. So that's, I think, a credit to the way that you built it and the other developers who've come on board since then. But it seems to me that that has had a lot to do with the fact that Fancraft is just sort of everywhere now that people can, you know, it would be one thing if you just put war on the site, but no one could really find it or use it. But that was, I think, a key. Yeah, I think the last time I was on, you mentioned something about the site always just working for you, which to me, I think, was a little bit

of surprise. Yeah, not always, but, you know, most of the time. It does make a big difference. I think getting the, you know, getting the data you want and getting it fast and accurately, like these are kind of like the things which matter most for data sites. I think there is, you know, you could have, you could have like the best data in the world, but if nobody can get to it, like, what is, it doesn't, you know, it's not abuse to anybody. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's something we focus a lot on, is making sure people can get to what they want.

And then also being able to export it and play with it on their own. Like, I think that's something we definitely encourage. One has improved even in the time that I've been at the site. Like, we don't have a lot of database freezes anymore, which is so nice. nice because they used to happen often. Then I felt like a, I felt like a mom who was like taking her kid to the emergency room. And I'm like, well, it's out of my hands. Hope that somebody else can fix this.

Cannot shepherd us through a database freeze. Well, you know, we have like this big bot prog problem, which happens. We do have a spa problem, yeah. Every so often. So for the trade deadline, I shut off essentially access to all bots on the site. And if you look at the number of non-members that are coming to the site versus all our traffic, it's like 2% of our traffic. And the other 98% is bots. It's pretty crazy. That's these days, typically what probably was like the site to go down or we have like site issues. It's the bots. How have you envisioned the scope as you've worked with various data providers? You keep adding new things.

things. So college stats, Negro League stats, stats for Japan, Korea, right? So these all require investments, both on the back end building the pages and everything, but also financial investments in paying for that data. So how do you decide, does this fit for Fangraph? Is this something we need? Is this something that's going to add value or translate to revenue or subscribers for us? Or it just seems like this would be cool, like Fancraft should have this. I mean, I think there's a part of it, which is just this, this is cool. We should, we should have this. For college data, I think we technically promised that back in 2019.

But there were some issues getting the data up on the site, and so it took another, I guess, six years. I mean, in terms of like, I think the negrily data has, that's kind of like essential to that database at the moment. but the KBO data came about during the pandemic. So that was kind of, it was the only baseball around for a little bit. And so at the time, I don't think we really had anything else to do except get KBO data up on the site. And then with NPB, I think there's just a lot of interest in NPB, especially in Japan. And I think we've seen that right now. Now, our traffic from Japan is number two in terms of countries.

And I think it may have even eclipsed Canada traffic by a little bit this year since we've added NPV data. So there's definitely an audience that is very interested in this type of data for NPD fans. So, I mean, to answer the question, and I think there's, you know, it's the combination. Like, is this going to be full? Yes. Is there an audience for it? Yes. The women's professional baseball league, which is, I guess, scheduled to start next year.

Like, that's something that I'm actively trying to get data for the start of that. I don't know exactly where that's going to, like, if that's going to pan out or not. But I am in, like, talking to data providers to see if that's something, which there will be. available that we could add to the site. We're always love to to share specific development timelines because as you noted with college data, like sometimes things happen in an unforeseen way and then things take longer than you're anticipating. Like the data presentation is funny or there's a global pandemic. You know, just like normal stuff that can happen and delay a project. But I'm curious if there are things that you could maybe tease for our listeners that are in in the pipeline for some time.

and you need not commit to when that sometime would be. But are there things that you're especially looking forward to in terms of new functionality that you can share with folks? Sure. I think one thing that we have been talking about doing for a little while is bringing more of the roster resource tools to leaderboards and custom reports. So if you want to filter by,

draft class or by contract status or things like that, I think that's something which we are certainly hoping to have available this offseason. That's something which has been on the list for a long time, which I think is actually going to happen. Yeah, there's one thing. Okay. We'll take it. Not getting any more right now. Maybe when we talk to you again in five years, there will be new things to tease. But when did you become aware that fan graphs was read in a pervasive way in front offices? I mean, before teams started hiring your employers and poaching people, presumably you started hearing from teams if they inquired about data or you just kind of heard through the grapevine that people are paying attention to this. And I wonder, you know, in the early years, I assume that.

Fan graphs was probably better than what a lot of teams had internally. Now they all have their own systems that are fancy, and I'm sure they still look at fan graphs, but they probably have in some ways better, more granular data than we can have in the public here. But what was your sense of sort of how fan graphs was appreciated inside the game and how that has evolved as the data available to teams has changed? I think initially Dave Cameron told me that front offices were reading fan drafts. Because I just don't have really that much interaction,

or at least back like a long time ago, I didn't really have any interaction with front offices, really. But I think going to the winter meetings for the first time, chatting with people, like I think it became clear that people were kind of familiar. This was maybe in 2011 or 2012 was the first winter meetings I went to. And so I think just talking with people, at the winter meetings, like it became obvious that people knew what they were reading

fan graphs or certain people would tell me that, you know, fan graphs is the first thing they read in the morning or that it's, you know, their homepage. So, you know, I don't know how much that's the case still, but I think for a certain amount of time it was. I mean, I think front offices are definitely still reading band graphs quite a bit now. So. And it seems like the relationship with other websites, other baseball analysis companies like that, that has changed to over the years where it seems like everyone's sort of friendly now, but that wasn't necessarily always the case. At least from my perspective, there was more of a rivalry. And Fangraphs was the upstart and BP was the old guard, which is funny because BP was like

the new kid on the block to everyone else. but the old guard in the sapermetric internet circle. And it seems like just everyone gets along now and Fancrafts and baseball reference standardized their war values and thresholds and everything. And so it feels like people are kind of pulling together, even though you're still ostensibly competitors, I suppose. But I wonder what your take on that is.

Yeah, I think, you know, maybe 15 years ago there was this sense of encroachment in the space. I get that. I think it's tough when a new company comes in and there's like, hey, I'm going to do something similar to what we're doing and they start to gain traction. And, you know, it's not that much fun and it makes everything harder.

So, you know, I understand like why it might not have been the friendliest of environments. But I think Jeff Sullivan always said something where there was, essentially, there was space for all these sites that, you know, just because one site was doing better, one site, you know, popped up doesn't mean that there's not still space for another site. In some sense, there's only so much space. But I think, I think there's quite a bit of appetite for good sports content between us and baseball perspectives and Facebook. and baseball reference, like we've all sort of carved out our own little spaces in the area,

you know, within baseball analysis. And I think we've kind of learned that just because there's another player in the space doesn't mean it's going to be, it's the end of the world or that, you know, we all can't be successful. So I think that's become a big part of it. Also, I think just media and internet media

is just really, just a really difficult spot. And so I think when you've all kind of been in it long enough, you all understand what the difficulties are and how, like, again, there's a lot of kind of camaraderie around like, hey, you know, like support us, but also support, you know, our friends over here. Yeah. I think that there's a real, especially in the last couple of years, I think that what you're describing really got accelerated by everyone having to weather the pandemic, then everyone having to weather the lockout. And now we're sitting here dealing with, you know, Google search results being completely decimated and AI scraping our articles so people don't click through to them and the pressure to like align yourself with a sports book. And so I think that a lot of the sites you're naming, and there are definitely others.

We are not providing an exhaustive list. This is the other thing that that David and I struggled with as we were editing his piece where it's like, oh, gosh, once we start naming people, then we have to name everyone because we don't want anyone to feel excluded. So 20 years is a long time. A lot of folks have cycled through the site. But, you know, you end up having this sense of, like, camaraderie with, you know, with a baseball prospectus or a baseball reference or baseball America or, you know, the list goes

on where it's like, okay, we're all trying to weather this. we're all facing similar headwinds, and the infighting would not do anyone any good. It also helps that, like, Craig and I are very good friends. So I was like, okay, well, I guess we're not going to fight just because, and I came from BP, you know, that's where I grew up. So I think there's been so much shifting of writers around to various publications at various junctures that everybody considers every site a home or a friend in some regard. And I think that's helped to sort of increase the sense of,

friendly, you know, just solidarity between everybody. Yeah, that was the last thing I was going to ask about, just the ecosystem, the environment for a site like Fancrafts and just this getting harder. You'd think it would be getting easier after you've got 20 years in and you have this established brand and you know what you're doing now and everyone knows the name, but just the headwinds of everything in this industry, multiple industries, just make it so difficult.

to continue to run a site like this as successfully as you have. So you said something earlier, but just like the goal is keep going. And it's like it's laudable that you've managed to do that for two decades despite all of these challenges. So how much harder has it gotten? And how have you adjusted the business model because of that? Because of all the things that Meg was just saying. And you know that you've put an emphasis on subscriptions and memberships as a opposed to just advertising because that just doesn't pay the bills anymore. I think it's been very tricky because just when you think you're kind of in good shape, the ground shifts beneath you.

Yeah. Like we've had one year where our advertising revenue looked really great, and the next year where it's looked really not great. And so with digital media essentially moving towards subscription, which is, I guess, what, how media used to make its money, or at least a lot of its money. I mean, I think there's only so much kind of reinventing the wheel. Like, if you look at the way media used to be sustainable

and the way media is now, it's still like the same stuff. It's subscriptions and advertising. So you're not really, you know, those are kind of like the things which keep it afloat. And then I guess there are certain media companies which do more B-to-B stuff, but there's only so many, like, levers you can pull. I think AI and with Google search numbers going down, I mean, I think that does pose a significant problem for a lot of media companies. But I was telling Meg that, like, we've never been really that good at SEO.

So. Even the thing I'm the worst at in my job is like, this headline will definitely lead to clicks. Thank God for Bowman. To Bowman's headlines lead to clicks or laughs or both? I know the latter. Yes. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely both.

I mean, people I can definitely identify a Bowman headline. Yes. That's for sure. Yeah. So, yeah, I think it's like for us. We've kind of avoided some of the short-term cash grab. It falls, though SEO, I will say, has not been a short-term cash grab. I mean, that's been around for a long time.

But when it comes to things like gambling money or, you know, people used to be part of like the Facebook media ecosystem and then like the rug got pulled out from under them, like these are not things we've participated in. So while we haven't been able to capitalize on them, we haven't become relying on them either. You're just insulated from the downturn because you just were never good at any of that stuff. We are very good at business. Like in some sense, yes.

It's either I'm not very good at business or I'm just, you know, taking the long view. Yes. But, you know, both can be true. well you certainly seem to be doing something right because fancrafts is alive and well seems to be thriving I'm certainly happy that it has provided a home for this podcast for several years at this point so I'm grateful for that and hope that this is just the start that you will not only outlive dial up but long outlive it me too I hope that as well all right one minor mystery solved back on episode 2341 in late June. We wondered how Red Sox pitcher Cutter Crawford had hurt his wrist. He suffered a season-ending

wrist injury, but the Red Sox were very cagey about how he had hurt his wrist. They wouldn't specify. They made it seem like something scandalous. Well, I guess we know now, more or less. There's a post from friend of the show Alex Spear of the Boston Globe on Friday. Cutter Crawford is at Fenway. He said he suffered his wrist injury while doing maintenance work around the house. He felt a pop and recognized it would be an issue. He expressed frustration given that he was nearing a live batting practice session when he got injured. Well, that's boring. Maintenance work around the house.

If that's all it was, I don't know why everyone was so reticent when that subject came up before. Anyway, now we know, I guess. Also, when Meg made a comment the other day about how we had discussed Otani a little less lately than we have historically, and I said that effectively while Patreon supporter and WikiKeeper Raymond Chen could probably look that up for us. He did look up the rate of Otani mentions in the episode descriptions, so when he's actually listed in the episode summary, which means we probably talked about him at some length. And here's the percentage of episodes in which he was a headliner dating back to 2016, 2016, 3 percent, 2017, the year before his MLB debut 12 percent, 2018, his MLB rookie season 19 percent, then 2019 7 percent, 2023 percent, 2021, fully operational. Otani, 21%, 22, 15%, 2023, 35%. That was peak Otani talk on the podcast.

2024, 22%, though some of that was Ipe Mizuhara related. And this year, so far, 14%. So it is indeed a career low rate of being a headliner on effectively wild episodes for Otani since his MLB debut, with the exception of that two-season stretch, 2019 to 2020. when he mostly wasn't pitching and also wasn't hitting that well. So, yeah, we've rained it in a little bit. I guess it just goes to show that you can get used to anything. In the early days, I didn't do as thorough descriptions,

and so the data doesn't work quite as well. Raymond also looked up Mike Trout's rates, but I think they're misleading for those first few years of the podcast. So he has Trout peaking at 24% in 2018, which was actually higher than Otani's rate in Otani's rookie season. Amusingly, Williams Astadillo also peaked at 19% in 2018. That's the Jeff effect.

Astidio was an effectively wild headliner at the same rate as Shohei Otani in Otani's MLB rookie year. Alas, Williams has been skunked so far in 2025. As far as I know, he hasn't played since Winterball. Oh, and earlier I noted that it would be a record comeback if the Guardians overtook the Tigers in the AL Central. At one point, they trailed Detroit by 15 and a half games. The biggest deficit ever erased is four team games by the 1978 Yankees.

over the Red Sox. So yes, it would be unprecedented, but it became even more unlikely on Friday as the Guardians lost and the Tigers want to widen the gap to seven and a half games. Perhaps you will consider supporting Fangraphs with a membership, and we hope that you will also consider supporting effectively wild on Patreon. In fact, there is one tier of Patreon support at which you eventually get a Fangraphs membership for free. Well, it's one of the perks, so you can kind of do both at once, both good causes, at least from

our perspective, although we are somewhat biased. You can support EffectivelyWild on Patreon 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, Marty Mertons, David Umhofer, John Smith, Seamus Cooper, and Tom. Thanks to all of you. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can contact us through the Patreon site. If not, you can send us emails at podcast at Fangraphs.com.

send your questions, your comments, your intro and outro themes. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, music, and elsewhere. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes at Fangraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKean for his editing and production assistance.

That will do it for today and for this week. We thank you, as always, for listening. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. and we will be back to talk to you next week. Thank you.