Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 249: Gabe Kapler on Advanced Stats from the Player’s Perspective

Episode Date: July 23, 2013

Ben and Sam interview former big-league outfielder Gabe Kapler about his respect for sabermetrics and the purpose advanced stats can serve for players.

I was joking with my wife. I said, no matter what, I'm going to come on this show with these guys on this podcast, and I will not allow them to bring my energy level down. As quiet as you guys are, I'm going to be just as loud on the internet. loud of interest. Good morning and welcome to episode 249 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller and also joined by a guest today. Our guest today is Gabe Kapler, who you probably remember from his 12-year big league career. And last week we found out that Gabe Kapler listens to the show, and we were flattered. We asked him to come on, and then he wrote something that came out on Monday

that got a lot of attention, and we were glad that we had already gotten our interview request in before everyone else did. So, Gabe, thanks for coming on. Oh, I appreciate it. I'm really looking forward to chatting with you guys a little bit nervous that my, uh, my splits are going to pop up at some point. And by the fact that I couldn't hit a right-handed pitcher to save my life, my career. So, uh, nevertheless, I'm glad to be talking some baseball with you guys. We can just discuss your, your splits versus left-handed pitchers if that makes you feel better.

No, no, I'm joking. I'm really interested at some point in doing a retrospective on my career numbers and why that was for me. Yeah, well, so that's kind of why we wanted to talk to you or why we got in touch with you is that you've lately just become a kind of a, you've embraced sabermetrics and advanced stats. And you've been tweeting about it and talking about it and writing about it. And we wanted to, I guess, ask you what the origin of this was. What's the genesis? How did you come to embrace these things? What have you been reading and looking into?

How did this come about? Well, it's interesting. Probably more than anything else, more than embracing, more than getting passionate about, I've been learning about advanced metrics or sabermetrics. It's been really interesting to delve into what makes the player who they are. And so I've found that my best resource has been interns at Major League Baseball organizations because they spend so much time devouring stats, finding different ways to analyze players and trying to be creative about it. Right. So

their intention is not necessarily to regurgitate information that they hear, but to find new and creative ways to analyze information. And so by keeping in contact with a few of these guys and there's been one, I won't mention him by name, but who's been particularly valuable to me recently. That's been a really quality learning experience. And I expect to devour more information over the weeks and months to come and then eventually be asked to come and be on your show full time. Right. Yeah. When Sam leaves, I'll come to you looking for a co-host. We could do the transition today. Right. So are you with the raise in some capacity now? Is that kind of your

gig now or are you doing other things? Yeah. Well, technically, I would say the answer is unequivocally yes. I work as a what we call like special assignments for the Ritz. And what I've done over the course of the last two, three months is essentially a combination of scouting and player development without a whole lot of analysis on numbers. Really, it's been my diving into the organization to really understand the players intellectually, understand them emotionally. And that's, I think, my biggest strength is sort of finding out who these guys are underneath their skin and then being able to help them because I

really understand the emotional side of baseball well. And I'm learning the relationship between the emotional side of baseball and the analytical side of baseball. And what I find most fascinating is the ripple effect of the statistics. And what I wrote about was specifically, you know, if guys understand what they're being evaluated on more appropriately, perhaps they'll be able to get excited and allow that momentum to occur and for them to carry that into their next start or into their next at-bat because they know that striking a ball well is actually the best thing

that they can possibly do for themselves rather than bleeding a ball over the second baseman's head. When they actually got beat, very clearly they were beat, but it reads as the hit in the box score the next day. And and when players are caught up in a metric like a win or an RBI or even a hit that they have so little control over, that can last, you know, two games, four games, six games. And for you know, you're you're three weeks and you've you've performed really poorly. But. But it's not because it's not for any other reason that you let it continue and continue to snowball. And you weren't even evaluating yourself on appropriate metrics. So that's sort

of been the impetus for my creativity and my want to dive into the things that you guys dive into on a regular basis. So I think anybody who's written about a team or written about baseball has sort of come to understand that front offices, for the most part, are looking at process stats much more than they're looking at the win or the batting average. And yet, like you wrote about today, in clubhouses, there's a real divide. And I would say that probably mostly with players, but also with managers and coaching staffs. So I'm wondering in the clubhouse with the team, who is sort of producing that culture that, you know, keeps the old school stats propped up? Is this just a natural thing from, you know, players not being

that interested in it? Or is something actually reinforcing it? Is there a culture that keeps advanced metrics from kind of taking hold? Well, yes. On the surface, it's as simple as it being embedded in our DNA from the time we start following baseball. So, you know, my children and I, we were on our way home from a football practice today. And, you know, my son, my older son, his name is Chase, and he's 13 years old, started to ask me about war. And I would never have asked about war. The only reason he asks about war is because he's heard me talking about it a lot recently. So he was asking me about Carlos Gomez and why he's sitting atop the league at war. Or he's, you know, according to baseball reference, he and Cabrera are tied at 5.6. So he asked me about that statistic.

But what's been embedded in our DNA from the time we were kids is the three biggies, batting average, RBIs, and home runs. So and you asked specifically about the culture, the culture in the clubhouse is sort of continued by all of the baseball men. Take the front front office out of the equation and just talk about the coaching staff, the manager and the players. And we all just tend to pass the same regurgitated information back and forth over and over instead of really opening our minds. And when we have a really bright young man from our front office enter our clubhouse rather than say, ah, he never played the game. He doesn't know anything about that. If we were to instead say,

come here, sit down by my locker. I want to learn as much as I can possibly learn from you. Educate me, make me smarter, make me better. That is the one thing that could permeate the clubhouse and change that culture that you alluded to a few minutes ago. So you think it's do you think it's the kind of the responsibility is that the teams then to to educate the players or is it the players to educate themselves or is it agents? Where do you where do you sort of see that coming from? Who should be doing that if the player doesn't take it upon himself? I think it's the responsibility of the player. So I always believe in personal responsibility. If I blow it, it's my fault. If I don't learn enough, it's my fault. But, I mean, front offices can have a huge impact on the lives of so but but all they can really do is deliver the information they can't they can lead a horse to water but they can't make them drink um so and then at some point it becomes the the responsibility of the veteran players in the clubhouse to talk

to the rookies the younger players about what they're actually being evaluated on i actually think you make a good point the agents can play a huge role because if I end a three game series and I call my agent, I say, I absolutely stink. I didn't get any hits. And he says, yeah, but you saw X amount of pitches during, you know, X amount of plate appearances. And, and you have no idea how valuable pitches per plate appearance is to an organization or, you know, whatever the metric is that was valuable at the time, you know, whether it be hard hit balls, exit velocity, you know, whatever it is that I did well and he can educate me on why that's important, he's going to make me a better player in turn making me more money and him more money. So I think that's a really quality

relationship to bring up the agent player relationship and how the agent can be instrumental in educating the player. But ultimately, at the end of the day, relationship and how the agent can be instrumental in educating the player. But ultimately, at the end of the day, just to answer the question straightforward, the responsibility always falls on the shoulders of the player. Yeah, there's a story in the in the Star Ledger last month, I think by Andy McCullough, who covers the Yankees for them. And it was about Sean Kelly, who who had a high ERA at the time, but his agent called him and told him about FIP, and he had a really good FIP. And Kelly says, and I laughed, and he was like, no, no, this is to

give you a boost to make you feel like your work's not for nothing. And so now he, this is kind of what you're saying, I guess. Now he's aware that he's doing the things that are under his control well, and maybe that contributes to a more positive mindset that could help him going forward. Right, and then you could actually tie that into the rest of the team. Because if you take a pitcher that at first has a very old school mentality, is completely focused on a win or ERA, and you can get his buy-in and perhaps he's the leader of a pitching staff. I'm not sure exactly who comes to mind immediately, but I think I've heard Scherzer talk a bit about some advanced metrics. But you're going to have some young pitchers that come up and look up to Max and be like, whoa, this guy's really good. Not only does he have 14, 13, 14 wins, but his FIP is

off the charts and he's talking about his FIP. And then all of a sudden you get that little buzz in the clubhouse where everybody starts analyzing their own FIP. And wow, you know, you have guys that really are a little bit more intelligent or more educated and prepared to really be focused on what can help their team win more than these like traditional throwaways that I think we're all we're all in. you know, throwaways that I think we're all in. You know, and actually it was brought to my attention that, you know, the win statistic can really tell a story. Well, unfortunately, it just doesn't tell an accurate story. And that's what I'm taking issue with recently is that people just say it tells a story, but it really tells a bad story or an inaccurate story. Bad is the wrong word.

And so I just want guys to really focus on the things that are meaningful. And so that's why I felt compelled to write that article. So obviously, if you're in the front office, you need you have a kind of a purpose for information. I mean, you're trying to win games and you're trying to use information in a sort of utilitarian way to make the right decision. It sort of has to be right. It has to be meaningful if you're going to use it. I'm curious, what do players want statistics for? What is their goal in knowing a statistic? What do they want to get out of it? Because they obviously don't have to make any decisions about who to cut or who to promote or how much to give a player on the free agent market.

What does a player need stats for? Or what do they use them for, I guess, emotionally or practically? I think it's highly variable. I always say that a Major League Baseball clubhouse from a personality perspective, or in this case what a player uses stats for, is just an extension of society. So if you walk into any workplace in the united states you have the funny guy and you have you know the serious guy you have the guy that's super analytical you have the guy that that you know wants to keep things really really simple

and in the major league baseball clubhouse is just an extension of that society so you are going to have the guys that use stats you know just around money and making money you're going to have guys that use stats that really want to know what pitch to hunt during an at-bat. I really became accustomed to having my last couple years in Tampa, somebody tell me why I should hunt the ball down because I have so much more success on driving the ball down than I am the ball up in the zone.

So I really wanted to know that bit of information. And then you have players that want no information whatsoever. Don't tell me anything because it's just going to screw me up. I just want to see the ball, hit the ball. In fact, I remember Pudge Rodriguez in Texas coming in, and I remember this vividly. It's a big home run for us. All the other players are trying to acquire information from him

because it was early in the game. He comes back in the dugout. Everyone's like, P know what'd you see what'd you hit he says i don't know oh you know you know what was it i don't know and and his it worked for him you know he didn't there was no um going into a new series and talking about the pitchers and deciding how they'd attacked him in the past and using that information to put him in a better position to have success he really relied on having less information he's really good at it so again getting back to my point highly variable every player is a little bit different in how they use that so it's

hard to sort of lump people into categories does Does that make sense? Yeah, but even Pudge knows his batting average, right? Yeah, yeah. No, certainly. So what does he need to know that for? Like, why does he want to know that? And why does he prefer to know that instead of his on-base percentage? I think because people are, human beings in general are very comfortable in the way things have always been done and they don't like to be change is scary right that's very human um we're very comfortable in wherever we are so pudge has always been comfortable looking at my batting his batting average he understands that 300 good 200 bad so he doesn't understand he doesn't if he If he walks, it's a disappointment. I'm using Pudge as an example. There are other guys who feel this way.

You know, I walked I walked on on seven pitches or eight pitches, and that's not as good as me lining a single up the middle on the first pitch of the at bat. Well, obviously, everybody knows that if the pitcher is going to show us more pitches, it's going to drive his pitch count up. to show us more pitches. It's going to drive his pitch count up. And the more valuable play is the walk than the line drive single up the middle on the first pitch of the at bat. Pudge didn't look at it that way, nor do many players in today's clubhouses. They just they don't see it like that. They think it's better to get a hit, you know, than walk on 14 pitches. It's really detrimental. So one of the things you wrote in your article, uh, which we'll link to in the podcast post at baseball prospectus, by the way, and you should definitely read it if you haven't, uh, you said, uh, thinking that because we play or played the game, we know the game best is a dangerous

proposition. Uh, and that's, that's something that a lot of people will complain kind of about the, And that's something that a lot of people will complain kind of about the player turned analyst on MLB Network or ESPN that, you know, when the player talks about something specific to his experience on the field, it's great and he's perceptive and he can tell you things that you never knew and you never would have thought. But when he kind of edges over into analysis and breaking down the numbers and evaluating players, it can get a little dicey sometimes. So my question is, I guess, why is it not more instinctive? I was on the Brian Kenney show last week, and I think you were yesterday. And he was asking me about Jim Leland and the pitcher win because he's kind of been a staunch supporter of the pitcher win. And he asked me, you know, this is a guy who's been in the game his whole life. He's seen more baseball than anyone. He knows more about baseball than anyone. Why hasn't he picked up on this by himself? You know, because the concepts are not particularly advanced. It's not like you have to know a lot of math. And if I knew nothing about baseball, I would think that the players playing the game would be the ones who would pick up on things

like this, that if you don't get an RBI, maybe it's because you're leading off or you don't have guys on ahead of you or, you know, these context specific things. If this were costing me money, you know, you'd think that at some point it would it would occur to you. You'd wonder whether this was really the right way to look at things. Why do you think that that it's not just sort of a natural thing that that players come to this realization over decades of playing baseball? I guess the way I'd like to look at it is maybe the way we as a society adopt technology, that you have your early adopters and you have the general population, then you have the laggards. And I think what's happened is we are still in our infancy stages

of introducing new metrics or new statistics to players. And so until we get to that stage where it's no longer just the early adopters, And frankly, at least as it relates to a major league baseball clubhouse, as it relates to the coaching staffs, we are still, you know, only the early adopters within that grouping have really adopted analyzing statistics in this way. So I hate to go back and answer the question the same way I answered a previous one, but it's because we are an extension of society, because we are very human, because we are change averse. And so while it is very important, it's like fitness. Why do we have guys that will continually eat fast food all the way into the end of their major league baseball careers? We know that's not what's best for them. We know they're going to focus better if they eat more vegetables. Well, the answer is because they've been eating McDonald's around baseball from the time they

were five years old. So they're very comfortable eating fast food and they're going to continue to do it because they associate it with success. As long as players are associating their success with the way they think about their numbers, they're not going to make a change. And the only way we're going to really allow advanced metrics to permeate a major league baseball clubhouse is when our kids who are hearing us talk about it. And we pop those up on the screen. The, you know, underneath the player, the highlight underneath the player is instead on base percentage instead of batting average. At that point, on base percentage is going to be the natural, comfortable metric that we use in conversation. But we still highlight the batting average. So it's going to take the media, the players.

It's going to take coaches and front offices collectively saying we are we are going to make a move and maybe maybe it is going to start with maybe it is going to start with television when we watch television if we see obp if we see you know weighted weighted on base if we see fit if we see war and we see these metrics on a regular basis on tv it's going to become more comfortable we're going to understand them easier guys are not going to have to dive in because they will already have this embedded in their DNA. I actually have wondered about this because, I mean, a kid who's coming up now, you know, anybody who was drafted this year, for instance, they're basically their entire cognizant life has been post Moneyball. And I imagine most or at least a large number of them were hanging

out on SB Nation blogs, which are very stat-friendly, and living on the internet, which is fairly stat-friendly and progressive. Do you see a very large generational divide between the young players coming up and some of the older ones who kind of predate the Moneyball stuff, or is it the case that to get to the majors, you have to spend most of your life working out and not playing around on the internet like an idiot? No, you know what? I think you're absolutely right. It's a beautiful, beautiful point.

As I talk to younger players, and especially the players, if I go around the minor leagues, they have a much more in-depth understanding of how they're being evaluated than the major league players they have and and specifically the veteran major league players by the way i mean in the past 10 years we've we've come leaps and bounds i alluded to this in in um the article that i wrote i don't think that i really took a really close look at anything beyond probably on base slug OPS until Ben Sherrington of the Red Sox sent me the study on the value of the out versus the value of the sacrifice button. By the way, I absolutely blew it because I took that information to my managerial experience in 2007 and I didn't bunt. And we had all these players that were developing, you know, all these young kids that needed to learn how to bunt.

And I just, everybody was swinging all the time because I was obsessed with the fact that the sacrifice bunt was a bad play. That I wouldn't allow my players to bunt. They were all swinging. And so, um, you know, I, my apologies to Josh, my apologies to larger, my apologies to all, you know, all these guys who don't know how to bunt now, if they don't, I had anything to do with that. But, you know, that was my impetus when, when, when, when Ben sent me that study, it opened my eyes to a whole new world. I realized how uneducated I was. Cause at that point, I still believed in the, in the sacrifice bunt the sacrifice bond. I still believed that it was part of culture. I still believed strongly in taking risks to steal bases. I don't believe those

things anymore. And I didn't believe them after those studies were sent to me. I really wanted to evaluate how often a guy was safe when he stole a base rather than just, hey, it's worth the risk. You have to want to make that adjustment. It took me until I was 31 years old until I really wanted to dive in. So I want to ask you about that email that Ben sent you. And I don't know. This might be too inside. You might not want to.

But, I mean, we've talked, Ben and I have talked about one of the challenges for a front office is figuring out a way to communicate with their coaching staff and their players, some of these ideas and, you know, where the liaison comes in and how you communicate it. And, you know, without being heavy handed or coming off looking like, you know, a nerd or a suit. So I'm just curious, how did he send you that? What was the context and, and how did, how, like, how did he get you to, to, to read it? Oh Oh, well the first thing I wanted to tell you and this is just, this is going to blow the whole inside thing but Ben and I knew each other. So he knew I was open-minded. The reason that I didn't understand is because I didn't have the information.

Nobody gave it to me even though I would have been the guy that if Ben or any of Ben's guys or Mike's Mike Hazen's guys or Theo's guys or Jed's guys, anybody in the organization at the time that had come to me, I would have been completely open minded. I would have soaked it up like a sponge. But I think there is a disconnect in the way information is delivered and who will be receptive to it, where there's that very human part of this that gets discounted. Like, how do you approach somebody with a bit of new information? And I think it was on your podcast that I heard you guys talking about, you know, I wasn't sure if it was if it was sabermetricians becoming general managers and how manager, oh, how easily they could make that transition.

Why has there not been a general manager that has come out from behind his desk to basically run an organization? And I strongly disagreed with discounting the management skill. The management skill is not the easiest part of the job. It is so tricky that even some of the greatest general managers in the game are still having problems with their delivery systems, still having problems talking to hitting coaches about how to deliver analytics to hitters, still having problems teaching pitching coaches how to approach pitchers.

So that management element, it cannot be discounted. It's hugely important. It's very dependent on somebody's interpersonal skills. And just to bring this full circle, that's specifically accurate as it relates to how Ben approached me. He just so happened to have a pretty easy subject. But I think if you ask Ben, if you ask the progressive GMs around the game, they will tell you that it is not easy to approach players and deliver new bits of information to them. Yeah, I've certainly heard that from a lot of people. And as you mentioned, some players will say that they don't want any stats in their head when they're going up to the plate or when they're on the mound. They don't want to be thinking about these things.

They don't want that clutter. They want to be focused on what they're doing. And I mean, if you're an organization and you want to kind of streamline this and have everyone on the same page as far as analytics goes, is that something that you think that you just kind of have to make a priority in the hiring process to go after someone who is open-minded and you know will be receptive to these things rather than sort of hire someone who's more traditional and hope for the best when you deliver these things to them? Well, I'm going to take a two-pronged approach to this. First thing I'm going to do is be like totally fantasy land like I hear you guys do sometimes on your podcast. so this is going to be

completely out there there's almost there's little to no chance it would ever be implemented but what you could do is you could take a football approach to baseball which is like a fine system a punishment system a lead with an iron fist from the very top where players were going to follow suit. They were going to line up and they were going to take tests and they were going to learn about analytics. And you could just take this approach where the players had no choice. They were going to digest new information. They were going to act accordingly. In other words, if the team approach that day was to not swing at the first pitch of the count under any circumstances, if a player stepped out of line, he could be fined. If he

continually stepped out of line, he could be released. The idea being that we are going to take a real team approach to baseball and we are going to take decision making out of the hands of the players. OK, that's fantasy land. What I think could be a reality is you finding the leaders on the team, not just the leaders, but you know, the, the coach, let's say the coach in on the staff that's most progressive and is most respected by the players. So maybe a guy in a leadership position within the clubhouse and a coach, you take those guys and you put the delivery system on them. You're, you're saying, look, we're going to give you the information and you're going to deliver it in the appropriate fashion to each player. You take a hitting coach who has an extraordinary relationship with the

players, you give him the relationship and the onus is on him to deliver the information and allow it to land and the players to absorb it. And then he's accountable for not being able to deliver the information. You know, that that's one way of way to approach it. That's that's not quite fantasy land. Do you think there's a kind of a clubhouse culture that makes it taboo to focus on your own statistics to to a great extent? I mean, you know, we're talking about process versus outcomes, and you don't generally hear players say, I mean, sometimes they'll say, I hit the ball hard, and it happens sometimes. But, you know, if a pitcher is focusing on his FIP, and he gives up a bunch of runs, and then he comes out and speaks to the media after the game and says, well, I gave up a bunch

of runs, but, you know, I struck people out, I didn't walk anyone and I gave up grounders. And the implication then is either that, you know, it was bad luck or his defense let him down or something. I mean, I feel like that maybe wouldn't go over so well. But Ben, they all, I mean, they all know their ERA and they all know how many wins they have. I mean, you don't, they don't have to necessarily say that about FIP in the media, but I mean, they're all looking at stats, right? Right, right. The question at the end of the day is, like, what they hope to get out of the stats. Right, but ERA and wins, I mean, those are things that actually happened.

I mean, they're kind of dependent on the team, so you can come out, and if a player has a good game, he always kind of tends to deflect and say, well, I'm just happy that I could help the team. Or if he has a bad game and the team wins, he says, well, I'm just happy that the team won. I'm not focusing on my own statistics. So we're talking about these process outcome stats. We're kind of talking about stats that maybe aren't reflected in the score of that game. And so I wonder if it would be kind of taboo to say, well, I did everything right. I did what I wanted to do, but I gave up a bunch of runs anyway. But I'm happy with the way I pitched. You know, that seems like something that maybe wouldn't go over so well. Do you agree? It's a great point. A, I don't think it would go over very well. Right. Because I think it would be an indication to his teammates that he did what he could.

Everybody else was responsible for the rest. Right. Which is kind of the implication of that stat in a way. It could also go the other way, though. He might say, hey, I struggled and thank God my team was there to bail me out. Even though I only gave up one run, it took a lot of work behind me. Thanks to FIP. Thanks to FIP. Thanks to FIP, now I know. Yeah.

No, I think that's hysterical. I also think that players, if they have the capability to work with the media on a regular basis and the media gets to know them, specifically the beat writers, because I think that you develop a relationship with the beat writers where they become so engaged with you that they begin to write sort of with your energy versus what, you know, with your words. And I think it's a really important thing to distinguish, because sometimes when you get a reporter that doesn't know you and you don't know them, they really rely on your quotes, which can be obviously taken completely out of context. But if my energy is, hey, look, I did everything in my power to help our team win tonight, but it just wasn't in the

cards for me. But hey, you know, these are the these are the things that I'm focused on. You could take that a number of different ways if you're a member of the media. So you it's almost like you'd have to be careful as a player which media member you are talking to. you'd have to be careful as a player, which media member you were talking to, so as to not sound completely narcissistic. Right. And it's, it's, it's a fine line. There's a balancing act there. Yeah. And I guess, I mean, this isn't specifically related to what you wrote about, but it seems like every couple of months,

someone says something about clubhouse chemistry and we end up talking about it on the show. And what do we know about clubhouse chemistry and we end up talking about it on the show. And what do we know about clubhouse chemistry? But I mean, the conclusion that I've kind of come to is that there are these extremes where one person will say clubhouse chemistry doesn't matter. It's completely about talent. And then on the other end, someone will come out and say, it's more important than talent. It's worth 20 wins, you know, and quote some number that seems really high. And then we argue about that for a while. But I wonder whether most of us are kind of in the middle somewhere where we think it matters, but maybe isn't the most important thing. And I mean, you were on a team, the 2004 Red Sox was a team that was kind of put together with these sabermetric

principles in mind, but also appeared to have that special kind of chemistry. And that gets a lot of credit for the fact that you won that year. So where do you stand on that, having actually been in clubhouses and also having an appreciation for stats and the importance of talent? clubhouses and also having an appreciation for for stats and the importance of talent well i generally try and i mentioned this in the article i mean i i'm up front i don't think that baseball players are the smartest they don't i don't think they know baseball the best and myself included i don't believe that because i was in clubhouses i you know because i was in major league baseball clubhouses on world series on a world Series team that gives me the right or, you know, to say X, Y and Z is quantifiable. You can quantify, you know, team chemistry.

What I can say is I believe in and listening to people who are who are super smart and most general managers, most front offices have people that know the know the game better than the players in a lot of ways. And what I can tell you unequivocally is that general managers and front offices are actively studying and trying to find ways to quantify clubhouse chemistry. So if they're doing, I believe that there is something to it. Now, I can't say with 100 percent certainty that Ben Sherrington and Mike Hazen brought in Victor Reno and Napoli and Johnny Gomes this year because they were good fits for Boston.

But I think they have been good fits for Boston. And you can make a case that last year's team was more talented on paper than this year's Red Sox team. And that would be a fair case to make. And now you have a team that is way outperforming that team. And you could bring Bobby Valentine into the discussion, and John Farrell, who's universally respected, into the discussion. You could look at the Tampa Bay Rays and the relationships that their pitchers have with one another.

I mean, they pull the rope in the same direction. It's no accident. Team chemistry, in my opinion, must be like a relationship in that a relationship, an interpersonal relationship takes work. It takes effort. And there is an expected outcome to that work and effort. In team chemistry, it takes work and effort. And I believe there's an expected outcome to that work. And call me naive, but because the general managers and the front offices and the interns are all trying to figure out how to quantify this, I believe there's something to it. I just have one last question. You mentioned the interns a couple of times

and people ask us a lot about how to get jobs in baseball. And one of the ways to get in is, you know, through an internship program. Who do the interns get listened to and who listens to them? I listen to them. And I think that that anybody look, they the hardest working men in the in the room in almost any profession are the interns. So take take professional athletics out of the equation just for the for a moment. And you look at any office environment and the guy that's running the errands, the guy that's busting his balls to learn about the organization are the guys that aren't getting paid to do so. They're strictly to learn. They're strictly to get better. They're strictly to add value so that in adding value, everybody sees how important they are to an organization and they actually start to pay them. So, you know, from that standpoint, how could they not be extraordinarily valuable

for me to talk to as a player or as a manager? Hey, I want to know what that guy is trying to figure out because I can tell you this unequivocally, he's spending more time on trying to figure out a creative way to win than I am because I have too much on my plate. I have to worry about taking batting practice. I have to worry about throwing bullpens. If I'm a manager, I have to worry about dealing with the media and writing out lineup cards. I don't have time to dig into a guy's splits from four years ago and sort of cross-examine that with his age and the wear and tear on his arm. Let that dude do it for me and let me learn. Yeah, 100%. I mean, those guys are extraordinarily valuable.

And what a waste of an opportunity to not talk to them on a regular basis. All right. Well, this was great and went really, really fast. Really enjoyed talking to you. And thanks for coming on. And it sounds like if you want one, you've got a second career in coaching ahead of you and i think most of the people who are listening to this probably wish that that you were on tv somewhere talking about baseball i wish i i wish i had a team so that i could hire you

to be my manager that's what i wish you guys are you guys are beyond sweet i really appreciate that and and honestly i every morning when i'm when I'm doing my I do my weight training really early in the morning and work out, you work out. No, no, actually, I just I'm just faking it. I'm like sort of pretending like I'm working out now. But while I'm while I'm throwing it around a little bit, you guys are on my on my iPhone and I'm playing the podcast. So really appreciate you guys getting me through it. It's awesome. I can't imagine. I mean, most people you see at the gym are, you know, they're putting on the final countdown or something to psych themselves up. And I can't imagine that listening to me and Sam would really get your heart rate elevated. But I'm glad it

works for you. This is going to be extraordinarily boring but where I work out which is like a stone's throw from my house I walk to the local high school in Malibu and they have a tiny little football weight room in a tiny little high school and I have it all to myself sometimes before the sun rises and so there's nobody else around.

If anybody else was around I'd be so mortified that i was listening to you guys immediately turn off my phone well you'll you'll find i think if you haven't already that that uh you're you're going to be a very popular person on the internet uh you will you will never have to to buy a beer when you're around bloggers from now on because i mean if there's one thing that we we've seen over the past few years whether it was brian bannister or craig breslow or max scherzer or uh anyone who's kind of you know a player or former player who's kind of come out as as an advanced

stat uh user uh they become they become pretty big with the internet people. Yeah, and it's going to be a craft beer, and they're going to tweet about it. Yes. Listen, I have my own personal bias towards certain beers. So if they come at me with something that isn't on a really, really good level, I'll be calling them out and doing so on Twitter and making fun of them, etc. All right. Well, we will hope to have you on again sometime because this was great and we'll let you go thanks again

I enjoyed it man, talk to you later so if you haven't read Gabe's piece for WEI you should definitely do that again we'll put a link in the podcast post at Baseball Perspectives and we'll tweet it out and you can send us emails for our email show tomorrow at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.