Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 300: Brian Kenny on Sabermetrics, Broadcasting, and Confrontation

Episode Date: October 4, 2013

Ben and Sam talk to Brian Kenny about the reaction to his campaign to kill the win and why sabermetrics needs a confrontational face.

Warren Spahn's classic 300 Major League victory is the most inspiring sports thrill of 1961. Good morning and welcome to episode 300 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. And because 300 is an exceptionally important number in baseball, we have an exceptionally important guest who I will announce in a moment. By way of introduction of him, I want to start by talking about a piece that sometimes baseball writer named Moshe Mandel wrote on March 18th about the insular log rolling world

of baseball blogging. Moshe said, Use certain stats, praise the right people, criticize certain writers, and you too can be part of the counterculture that is sweeping the sports nation. Once you're in the club, your content is not subjected to nearly the same rigorous analysis

and subsequent snark that an outsider might face. In the few instances where a member of the club is criticized, it is with a much softer touch and more forgiving tone than that afforded a member of the media. Just a few days later, as though Mosher was a prophet, Brian Kenney got his own radio show on NBC Sports Radio. A few days after that, he got a show called MLB Now, in which he debated hot baseball topics with Harold Reynolds. And just like that, the sabermetric world had its probably most divisive member. Kenny has been, I would say, probably the most high-profile defender of many sabermetric viewpoints over the last six months. He has also, I would say, changed the tone in a way that

sabermetricians are often not very comfortable with. And because of that, he is strangely criticizable in a lot of ways, I would say. It feels as though people who have been playing polite with each other for many years now feel no compunction about getting a little bit, I don't know, in tussles with you. And in a way, it's kind of nice to see, and in a way, I'm not sure where it's taking us. So, Brian Kenney, welcome to the podcast. How are you? That's so welcome. You say I'm confrontational. All right, let's do this, fellas.

So, you're probably most famous for the Kill the Wind movement, but you're also famous for your Hawk Harrelson debate, and I guess you're somewhat famous for not enjoying no-hitters is a thing that I've seen people attribute to you a lot. And so I guess the question that I would have, probably more than anything, is what do you sort of figure your role is and what do you figure your goal is when you go on the air? Well, I question everything.

I look at things skeptically. I look at things logically. And when things don't line up logically, I point them out. It's really not much more than that. And I am pretty dogged and fairly persistent. And through the years now, because remember, I was doing, I mean, I've been in this business 25, well, no, 27 years. And when I first started reading Bill James and total baseball was a long, long time ago, by the time I got a voice on ESPN and was doing baseball tonight, uh, I was, you know, on the air regularly and I was consistently, you know, held back, uh, being told that people were not ready for this, people don't understand it, can you just do it the way we've been doing it,

and stop making so much trouble. And I guess I listened and I listened, and at a certain point, when I went to Major League Baseball Network, and I really immersed myself in study doing clubhouse confidential at a certain point i did kind of turn my uh i don't know if i i wasn't a conscious decision but at a certain point i really did say why do we by we i mean you two guys with me because we're in this together why do we have to be polite to them when they are not polite to us and why do you suppose we are i because i ben and i are both very non-confrontational guys we're both i at least i can speak for myself i'm terrified of getting in fights i am like i'm

generously you might say pacifistic um and less generously, you might say a wuss. Why do you suppose it's taken so long for Sabermetrics, as you would say, to kind of get confrontational in this mainstream way? Well, it's very hard to break through. Look, the reason I have this voice, the reason I have these platforms, is not because of my baseball brilliance. It's because I'm a very good broadcaster. It's because I can host shows. Again, the people at ESPN, they didn't care if I was studying baseball sabermetrically and had a good line of logical thought. They knew I could write and I could read and I could anchor, you know, SportsCenter, college football halftimes,

anchor, you know, sports center, college football, halftimes, Friday night fights, all these different shows that I did. So I'm a host. So I get the job at MLB Network and I'm a broadcaster. I'm a host. But I also also studied baseball very deeply and have for years. And because I'm in that spot, I now have a chance to talk to these mainstream guys that you guys do not have the chance to talk to. And you have to ask yourselves, well, anybody that criticizes me now, they should ask themselves, how come they're not in a position to criticize the mainstream people and the people still in positions of power? I would ask you that. Why do you think you're not in that position?

Do you think it's... And the answer is, wait, I can answer that. The answer is, they're not letting you. So they're not letting you. And so everybody that gets ticked off, whether they're, I don't know, taking a shot at me on Twitter or writing on Deadspin that, oh, I'm too confrontational and, oh, you know, can you stop yelling at people? And I would say, hey, you know what?

You're working on a small website. I'm not talking about your baseball perspective. That's a tremendous tradition, obviously. But all these guys were doing excellent work at one of these smaller websites. I don't ask them, hey, how come you're not on Fox during the World Series? How come you're not on Fox during the World Series? How come you're not on Baseball Point? How come the only places that you've been able to get on

TV over the last 15 years are on the shows that I host? Well, they're holding you back. And if you're okay with that, well, then they're good with it too, because that suppresses you economically. Yeah, I went on Max Kellerman, your friend Max Kellerman's show recently, and he told me that if I want to make the big bucks, I have to start calling people stupid. So I'm working on it. But you need to just call them out. And when they start trumping you with their nonsense and they start shifting the arguments and they start just waving you away, realize they're waving you away and they're going back to their mainstream, higher-paying jobs. So again, I say if everybody's good with that because all the war has been won and stop yelling at people and stop confronting people and stop being so bold in your thoughts, I say,

look, I've got a gig. I've got several gigs. I can just go along and get along easily. But I don't know why we intellectually would want to do that. Is it inherently easier to make the non-fact based case on television? Is it easier to make the case that's not based on numbers and statistics and sabermetrics? Well, you know, I often just listen to the quality of what someone is saying. And certainly, you know, that's what happens to me often when I'm on any set, on any show that I've done over the past 15 years, is I'll listen to what an analyst says, and I'll sometimes think, what did you just say? What sense does that make?

And I have a little tolerance for that. When I left ESPN, I got one of the highest compliments I could have gotten from one of the editorial managers there, and his name was Chuck Salatoro. And he was in the newsroom, and we left. And when I left there, it was my last day. We were talking in his office to meet you know we would we know each other for years and you know he was even executives like i thought

cut it with the problem uh... but he's someone that you know i would see through meetings and you know he would watch me and we didn't have a lot of day-to-day together separate period of time i was doing six p m sports center and he told me he said he said your best work here was on the Hot List. The Hot List was a show I did on the SPN News in the afternoon from 2003 to 2006. And now because it was,

this was before there was sports programming in the afternoon. Believe it or not, it's not that long ago that we were on in the afternoon and everybody, most of the country, waited until 6 o'clock when Sports Center went on. And that's when sports television began at 6 p.m. Think about that.

That's not that long ago. So I'm doing this afternoon sports show, and it's being watched by a lot of people in the industry. But we're like a small red-tag band compared to SportsCenter. SportsCenter has an army of people. We have a small bunch of people. So we were just working our tails off, just, you know, bringing it up. Hey, look, it's John Clayton. You talk to him for 10 minutes.

Hey, it's Peter Garamond. Talk to him for 10 minutes. And you bring in a guest. Hey, it's Billie Jean King. Wow. And, you know, you talk to him. Hey, it's a football player. But then you go back to, you know, hey, we can start booking people.

And I think they're interesting. So I immediately got Bob Nyer on and got Joe Sheehan on. And so I started, you know, cultivating, you know, this group of what I would now call the intelligentsia, started getting them on. And what Chuck Salaturo said to me was, he said, what you did on your show was

you demanded that people be good on the air. He said, you challenged them, you poked back at them, you questioned them. He said, you demanded that they be good. And I took that as the highest compliment that I didn't just move on. Here's the next question. Hey, thanks for joining us. I actually asked, what do you mean by that? What does that mean? And look, sometimes that gets me in trouble. Sometimes I'm sitting on a set and I'll hear

something that somebody says, especially now where they've made it kind of my job to say, Harold, what are you talking about? But yeah, that's the thing that I've been placed in now. So yeah, there's going to be a few more confrontations. So, okay. So as someone who's spent most of the season debating Harold and debating Hawk and various other people with similar viewpoints, Sam and I talked recently about whether baseball arguments ever really make any headway, you know, whether anyone is ever really persuaded after we throw out our arguments and we hash them out for a bit, about Jack Morris pitching to the score. And when he had a two run lead, he'd allow one run. And when he had a one run lead, he wouldn't allow any runs. And you said, you know, there have been studies done on this.

It's not true. People have gone game by game and looked at his logs and there's just no evidence that this is true. And, you know, he basically shrugged it off. It didn't change his mind. I doubt he went home and looked up those studies and said, hey, maybe there's something to this. So is anyone ever persuaded by these debates, or are we just kind of yelling past each other? There's been a very big change within our walls

at MLB Network. I think if you talk to Dan Plesak, if you talk to Sean Casey, Kevin Millar, a lot of players that were just not exposed to this way of thinking, suddenly I'm there, and not that I'm so great or I'm so smart, but I am there. And again, my whole way of being is a little more in your face and a little more, you know, wait a second, are you listening to what I'm saying? I'm not letting that go, what you just said. What makes you think that? Really? Show me some evidence and I'll back it up. And I've had many of the analysts that I work for say, you've really changed the way I think. Larry Boa has said that to me. Dan Plesak, Sean Casey, you know, and beyond that,

even Harold, as we wrapped up the show season this year, and Harold does not want to hear this stuff. He really looks at the game a different way. And I love Harold, but he really doesn't want to hear it. And yet even he said at the end of this year, you know, I really learned a lot. You got me to think an awful lot. And you'll hear Harold now, and I'll watch at night. I watch MLB tonight when I'm not on it, too.

I watch it at night. And he'll start how old now and I'll watch at night. I watch MLB tonight when I'm not on it, too I watch it at night and he'll start looking at defensive statistics. He started to integrate that into his analysis So you tell me is that success I say yes So I wonder at this time of year People start looking at baseball ratings And they start comparing playoff ratings to football and they never measure up and people take this as a sign that baseball isn't at the center of the conversation anymore, that it's declined in popularity. As someone who's in the broadcast world and has covered other sports in the past, do you feel that there's any merit to this? Is the game as healthy as it's

ever been? Is there as much interest as it's ever been? Are ratings a fair way to gauge its popularity? There's a lot of ways of looking at it. I bring this up a lot on my radio show, and I tire of it because I brought up several years ago. Maybe it was five years ago at this point, but there was the Forbes piece that came out, the study that came out, that baseball revenue was the equal of the NFL's. But it doesn't, for some reason, it doesn't resonate. Maybe the NFL does a better PR job. I don't know.

But I know I've, you know, recently worked for ESPN, and the mantra there is constantly do more football, do more football. People love football. I think it's a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, football is enormously successful. It's kept on going. It's kind of found its way through the kind of dynamic of the way people watch sports and digest sports now. The once-a-week nature of it, even though it's now Thursday through Monday,

just fits in a little easier into people's lives. It's a little easier to follow. It certainly has benefited from the kind of being DVR-proof, that it's a weekly event that people kind of gather around to watch and they need to watch live. So I'm not saying that football hasn't become enormously popular, but the gap between football and baseball is enormously overstated by people who really don't think it through.

Is there any reason that the average fan should care about the ratings? I mean, assuming that they stay over some certain threshold that keeps them playing the games. It seems like that gets a lot more media coverage than probably it has relevance to our lives. And I'm wondering if I'm just missing the point of it all. Yeah, I get tired of it too. I mean, look, I guess it was Rudy Marksky who was doing that first and pointing out the ratings. And now it's so prevalent,

the media critiques on blogs and on websites. And yeah, I mean, who knows? You can look at it, you can find certain trends, and I'm interested because I'm in the industry. Now, are other people interested? I have no idea. You're right. If you're not in the industry, why would you care?

For me, I care. I'm in the industry. I've got to follow these things. And yet, it's greatly overblown. And also, people have to wonder why is baseball supposed to be this antique sport? Why is it still generating so much revenue locally and nationally? And why it still has our attention? And why at stadiums, you know, we're still talking, I think they just announced it was one of the top 10 years

all time in attendance. And that's not including minor leagues. So, yeah, I mean, I'm interested in that. I would think you guys are too, the average fan. I don't know why it would influence them. It seems like you and Ben and I have to some degree sort of a niche audience that's interested in the finer details of the game and really wants to kind of challenge themselves to some degree.

And the sort of narrative stuff, you know, the no-hitters and the grit and the pitching to the score and all those sorts of things, it seems like kind of play to a bigger audience, and that's probably why they exist. That's probably why they developed over the course of 100 years. Those things got highlighted because a lot of fans are really into them. Do you think as those sorts of things start to, you know, lose their value as storytelling devices that it presents any sort of threat to the game as a general sport. Is there any risk that the sport becomes kind of like horse racing, where it's only the

diehards who really want to get super smart about it that are going to be paying attention? No, I don't think so at all. That's what I say about the win. That's what I say about no hitters. If these things went away away we'd miss nothing it could include that we've got that maybe uh... you'd miss a couple of exciting uh... dramatic

covers they like a self induced dramatic moments uh... because we kind of still think no hitters are tense and dramatic and so it it is something that we created and now have followed and blindly follow. And so, yeah, that's fun, but the pitching win is becoming more and more devalued to the point where people are looking at it less and less, and I know plenty of young fans who don't even look at it at all. The triple crown in the next 20 years is probably just going to go away. And yet we'll miss nothing.

It's the game on the field that is so excellent. And we'll have a better understanding of it. And we don't need these, you know, archaic storytelling devices from the 1880s. So has anything that you've pushed gotten the least traction from the larger audience? Like, do you get much uh positive feedback to the no-hitter stuff i mean ben and i have talked about how we're not that into no-hitters um but uh you know if people are we just sort of roll with it right is that is that something that you get kind of the least traction on or is there something that you've kind of

abandoned because just there just wasn't a movement? I don't really have a wish to have any type of movement. I just happen to do shows that focus on baseball and focus on not just, well, you know, look, I'm kind of driving that, not just looking at things sabermetrically and the cultural divide, but also looking at things from a historical context. And that's why I look at triple crowd.

It makes no sense. Pitcher wins. It makes no sense. Find out where they came from and realize that the people who came up with these things, if they were still following this, they would laugh that it's still being followed in this way now that we know much better. But I'm not looking to make a movement. I just know, hey, I'm on Twitter.

I can throw it out to the audience, see what they say. And I like to, yeah, I like to tweak. I like to prod. I like to, you know, kind of go with a little bit of blast of logic and then not back down and tell people, you tell me, you know, why you value these things that no longer actually have any value. And I'll challenge people on that. But I'm not always looking for, hey, I want to get rid of sacrifice bunts, although I do.

Or I want to get rid of the save. Everybody wants to get rid of the save. So I'm barely on that at all. I'm not looking for movements or start trends. I'm doing my job, which I believe to be serving the audience and making them think and making them think independently. And I think there's a lot of people out there that think the same way, but there's very few people in the media that are there driving that and that are feeding that, that are saying, yes, by the way, this is real. This is nonsense. And if I'm overly persistent, it's because I guess people are on my Twitter feed,

or people are watching the show. So that's not a bad thing. One of the criticisms of the Kill the Wind campaign is that, you know, you're preaching to the choir, or that this is an accepted thing that, you know, we all understand. And I wonder whether that's a product of the fact that, you know, the sabermetric sort of fan sort of lives inside this echo chamber, right, where we read what each other writes, right, and we talk to each other only. And so it seems as if no one actually believes these things anymore. But really, I mean, they're out there, right? It's not the case that you're just, you know, talking into an echo chamber where everyone thinks these things already. You're, you know, talking into an echo chamber where everyone thinks these things already.

You're, you know, you're meeting some opposition out there. There are still people who believe these things. Listen, I was, you know, that's the thing, and that's well put, Ben. I'm stunned by those who are good writers, who are perceptive, who then start saying, stop beating the dead horse, which, you know, came out in the Deadspin piece and then in numerous places. Why can we stop doing this? We all know this. Get over it. And I say to that, hey, I hosted the all-star press conference at Citi Field

where the manager of the American League team told me he was going with the starter for his team because of his win-loss record, and he named his final pitcher on his staff because of his win-loss record, and he named his final pitcher on his staff because of his win-loss record. I'm being told on a daily basis that the major award, the highest honor for a pitcher in the American League this year, is going to be awarded because of his win-loss record. So, you tell me if it's dead and buried. It's actually happening by those who still hold the reins of power,

those who are still in the decision-making process to grant awards and then tell the greater public that, hey, this is the best pitcher in the league, this is one of the best pitchers in the league that needs to be on the All-Star team instead of, say, a Hiroki Kuroda. And when we get to our Hall of Fame voting, they will be the same people who will say, hey, Curt Schilling doesn't have enough wins. So you're absolutely right. Everybody who is following you and Dave Cameron, Jonah Carey, Joe Sheehan of the world, they're

all hearing the same sort of thing that makes perfect sense. But they're not the ones driving the bus. Jim Leland is still driving the bus. I work for Major League Baseball Network, and most every person I work with as a professional analyst tells me that I'm flat out wrong in devaluing the win, that there is really something to it. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. In the real world, it's still

happening. Now, there's not a GM or assistant GM that thinks that, but they're not going on, you know, they're not fighting that fight and making it something that's out there. But I'm out there pointing out the nonsense, and yeah, it still exists. And for those who say, oh, it's a dead horse, no, the

horse is running around, and it's plowing your field right now. So the horse is still out there if you want to look for it. I don't think of the dead horses being the issue, though. I think of the dead horses actually being the emotion over it, the fact that you seem to care this much about a thing that largely we've kind of just moved on from. I mean, everybody's kind of gone over this, and we've accepted that, you know, a large portion of the world is just going to be, you know,

a bit slow to come around on some of these things. And, you know, in a few decades or whatever, the wind will be dead on its own, and there will be some other thing to fight over. But, like, it feels like the sort of the emotion, the – I don't know if this is actually how you feel, but, like, it sort of comes across as, like, the sort of don't know, I don't know if this is actually how you feel, but like it sort of comes across as like the sort of anger or agitation about it is what kind of feels like, you know,

like maybe a little bit fatiguing. Like, like we, we, we went through this and like, we're, we're sort of tired. It's like, it's like when Ben and I talked about the, the Cabrera-Trout thing again, it was just, you know, we didn't have the energy to have the same fight two years in a row. We did this last year, and it was kind of just, all right, well, we'll just accept whatever happens. Because, you know, at the end of the day, it's all just make-believe anyway. Who really cares what, you know, who wins an MVP or what stats there are? It just sort of feels like that's the issue more than anything.

It's like the tone, right? Well, I don't know. When I'm on a show and someone tells me that I'm dead wrong and I don't get baseball, I'm going to defend myself. So if it appears that I'm educated, it's because someone is telling me to my face that I'm flat out wrong and I don't get it. Maybe you don't have to deal with those guys, but I do.

And if you're saying you're tired and fatigued of the issue, well, get used to losing it and enjoy losing it because you're losing it. Well, I mean, not actually losing it. No, you are. Who do you think the MVP is in the American League? I don't care who the MVP is. I care about whether the team is going to win. You don't care about any comparative analysis or awards?

Okay, that's fine. But if you care about who the media, who are entrusted with this job of comparative analysis to tell the public who are the best players or who is worthy of the awards, if you're fine with those doing that job are not nearly as good as you are having the power to do that job, well, that's why you don't have that job. Yeah. I think I probably am okay with that. Actually. I think that's exactly the way I feel. I mean, I, I, I accepted that, you know,

half the world is going to be wrong on every issue sort of by definition. I just, you know, like how, how much energy do we really have to fight these sort of quasi political political issues? Yeah, but look at their advances over the last 20 years. How can you say that? Bill James has been, you know, out in obscurity railing about these things for decades. I can't even imagine what Pete Palmer and John Thorne were thinking, like, in the mid-'80s

when they had hidden baseball out there, which had unlocked all of these things, and nobody was listening. So if you're saying, well, in 20 years, we'll all get it. Well, great. You'll be, I don't know, 50 or whatever you'll be, and I'll be 70. I don't want to wait. I don't know why we have to wait for the rest of the world to smarten up. Now, that doesn't mean the guy buying a hot dog watching the game has to smarten up.

If he wants to watch the game, watch the game. But then don't be a professional baseball analyst, quote-unquote, and tell me with complete certitude you know what you're looking at when you really don't. But what does it change if somebody thinks that Miguel Cabrera is more valuable than Mike Trout? What does that change for you, for your life, or for the way you watch the game?

I mean, you know who's better, and you can tell your listeners or your viewers who's better, and you can write articles about who's better, and if you have a vote, you can cast it. I guess I just don't see, like, if, you know, if there's a writer at CBS Sports who doesn't get it and, you know, has clearly been exposed to all the arguments. I mean, there is not an argument that hasn't been made yet, and, you know, he hasn't accepted those arguments.

You know, what's really the appointed doing that call me double i don't know sleep over the past you say another this is my job i go to work in this is what we do and that's that's the job right and i'm not losing sleep uh... dot more important than you know my family or my life or get my children in college and that sort of thing uh... i would just say that uh... i like that Ken Rosenthal has now back-to-back years chosen Mike Trout as his MVP.

I don't think that would have happened without the sabermetric community constantly pushing forward logical thinking and skeptical thinking. And John Heyman, I've had John Heyman, who is kind of, you know, on the other side of this, is someone who is, I hope, kind of the model for the future. The sports writer who is not exposed to this level of thinking, who now regularly writes about wins above replacement and is starting to see the value in at least looking at the different aspects

of the game and how to quantify them. And I'll say this about John Heyman as well. Two years ago, I went at him hard just while we were doing segments on Tim Raines. Now he votes for Tim Raines. This year, I went at him hard over Fred McGriff. Now he votes for Fred McGriff. I see value in that. Do you? Well, maybe not in Fred McGriff, but Tim Raines, sure.

Okay, last question. Not Fred McGriff, but Tim Rain, sure. Okay, last question. Last question. The tagline for Clubhouse Confidential on MLB Network is the show for the thinking fan. And I wonder what percentage of fans do you think have the potential or the latent desire to be a thinking fan? How many are there out there who just have no interest in

approaching the game that way, and you can talk to them about it, and you can persuade them and expose them to it, and it's just never going to take? And how many are out there still kind of, you know, waiting to be converted, waiting to see the game that way if they just are exposed to it? Well, this seems strange, but I guess I would have to say I don't have the data for that, Well, this seems strange, but I guess I would have to say I don't have the data for that. But I would say it's huge. And maybe I see things, look, my two sons are in their mid-20s, and they both graduated from Berkeley. So certainly I'm dealing with, you know, not kind of the average guy, average young guy. But when I go out to a ballpark, Citi Field, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium,

you know, even Philadelphia, any ballpark I go to, I constantly get feedback from young male fans, guys in their 20s. When I was doing my radio show on ESPN

and now that I do my radio show on NBC Sports Radio, I get feedback from young male fans, college age guys, guys just getting out of college

who want to know what's actually going on, who want to think of things logically, guys who grew up in the information age, guys who grew up with sortable stats available to them, where they didn't have to wait for the elites to tell them or the experts to tell them what was going on on the field of play. They could look it up themselves and question it. Those guys really want to know the real deal, and those guys are the ones that I am catering to, that I'm serving. And I think it's a good thing to serve the younger viewer, younger fan, especially the

younger male fan who has real interest in that. And I think the percentage is much, much higher than anyone thinks. Well, I hope you're right, because that will be good for all three of us. So thank you for coming on, for bringing some professionalism to this podcast. You can follow Brian on Twitter at MrBrianKenney, where you can either agree with him or argue with him, and he will do either. And you can watch him on MLB Network. So thank you, Brian.

Thank you. Sorry I got so confrontational with you, Sam. You cut it out, didn't you? That was delightful. It's a dose of the authentic Brian Kenney experience. This is just what it's like. I didn't want to rob you of that. I wanted to yell at you for a little bit so you can feel what Hawk feels.

Right. All right. Thank you. We'll have to have you on sometime to argue about Fred McGurk for 40 minutes. Thank you guys. All right. Thank you.

We'll be back next week.