Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 843: Cole Figueroa is Your Sabermetric Spirit Animal

Episode Date: March 19, 2016

Ben and FiveThirtyEight author Rob Arthur talk to Pittsburgh Pirates multi-position player Cole Figueroa about his use of statistics, why athletes should keep a close eye on what teams are tracking, and how his future depends on a small sample.

Two different worlds, we live in. Two different worlds, but we will show them as we walk together in the sun. That our two different worlds are one. Good morning and welcome to episode 843 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by our Patreon supporters and the Baseball Reference Play Index. I'm Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined not by my usual co-host Sam Miller, but by my colleague at FiveThirtyEight, Rob Arthur. Welcome back, Rob. Hey. So we are interrupting our team preview series today to bring you this special bonus episode because we want to talk to a player who's become a hero to baseball nerds this spring.

His name is Cole Figueroa. He's been in the big leagues with both the Rays and the Yankees, and he's currently in Pittsburgh Pirates camp trying to add a third team to his baseball reference page. Pirates beat writer Travis Sachik recently wrote in the Tribune Review that Cole is, quote, perhaps the most mathematically gifted player in the Grapefruit League. And my girlfriend, Jessie, recently wrote in an instant message to me, quote, Cole Figueroa is everything you love. So a few hours ago, he was standing in the batter's box facing Luis Severino, and now he is talking to us. Hey, Cole. Hi, yes, I am here. I survived Mr. Severino. My launch angle was a little off today, and I probably a little bit on the negative side. So I grounded out to first base and

now I'm here talking to you. So one way that non-professional athletes like me and Rob maintain our self-esteem while watching baseball players is by telling ourselves that while yes, we may not be as big or as fast or as coordinated as those guys were probably better at doing math or writing computer code or analyzing advanced baseball stats. And now you come along and leave us nothing to cling to. You've already got the glamorous career. Can't you just let us have the stuff that doesn't help get you dates or potentially make millions of dollars? Well, I think I need to clarify this a little bit. In this particular instance, you're actually talking to an undersized, undertooled, somewhat of a thinking player. So I wouldn't take it as

badly as you're taking it right now. I think it's look at me as maybe one of your own that happens to have very good hand-eye coordination. Okay. That's a good point. I think you and I are actually the same size, but only one of us would be described as undersized because no one expects writers to have a certain size. That makes me feel a little bit better. All right. So it's becoming more and more common for players to pay attention to data, but it's still rare to hear a player discuss statistics and physics with the depth of understanding that you do, maybe because, you know, being one of the best baseball players in the world doesn't leave a lot of time for reading books about programming. So how did you get to the point where you're buying a book called Analyzing Baseball Data with R, which is written by a former baseball

prospectus author and telling your teammates about optimal swing paths? Right. So I think it's important to start maybe the genesis is when I was younger, and any as any baseball player is, I mean, you are obviously moved to statistics because of averages on base percentage. I mean, the whole game is built on statistics. So I guess we can start there at a young age. I just happen to be a little more curious maybe than most. And then as I built an understanding of some of these formulas or algorithms when I aged, I just happened to apply them to some of the things

that I enjoy doing. Computer coding hasn't always been something that's been in my life. It's something I picked up a little later, but it's something that is a hobby to me. I find it fun. I find it fascinating. And like baseball, there's a lot of failure. And I think for some odd and apparent reason, I just like to fail a ton. And that red syntax error seems to be my best friend at times. So yeah, so I mean, it just it's something that just grabbed me. And then I kind of just took it and ran with it. And I don't want to come off as some professional programmer, if that's such a term. I didn't go to school for this. I was self taught. It's something I spent a lot of time,

a lot of effort trying to understand and still trying to understand. And I think anyone could appreciate the curiosity just from my part, but also I appreciate the time and effort. It made me appreciate the time and effort other people put into it. As I progressed, obviously, I got traded to one of the most innately inclined teams, the Tampa Bay Rays. And they kind of feed you that a little bit. They don't give you the whole, they call it the matrix is their system of data analytics. It's kind of the brains of the operations. They don't really let you dive into that. But they give you little bits and pieces enough to where it leaves you a little thirstier. And I needed my quench. So I decided to kind of do it on my own. And I would discuss it with Andrew Friedman and some of the analytics department

that were there at the time. So that's just kind of where it built up to where it is now. And it's, like I said, it's a great hobby of mine. It gets me away from the game, which kind of is counterintuitive because it's kind of the game, but it's just something that I enjoy doing. So you have been not only with the Rays, but really with three very analytically oriented teams, whether by coincidence or not. So, and of course the Pirates are among those and Mike Fitzgerald is a sort of a stat head who is with the team and travels with the team on the road. So are you just trying to satisfy your own curiosity about these things when you are talking to these guys, or are you actually trying to improve yourself as a player?

Well, I think it's a little of both. I think it kind of goes hand in hand. Obviously, the curiosity is there, but as a player, you're looking for any edge, and especially as a player that is typically your 22nd through 25th man on the roster, you're looking for anything you can get. Obviously, as a player too, you have to understand it is a team game, but I think the biggest thing people miss is there is, as a baseball player, a lot of selfishness. It just comes with the territory,

and pretty much anything you do in life, if you want to be successful, there lot of selfishness. It just comes with the territory and pretty much anything you do in life. If you want to be successful, there is some selfishness that comes with it. And I think that's where the disconnect is. And I'm sure we'll get into this later, but I just want to kind of lay the groundwork. The big disconnect that we have today between maybe the analytics we see on TV and the analytics we get and the analytics maybe players want to see. So I was just curious, do you ever see yourself getting into the analytics we get and the analytics maybe players want to see. So I was just curious, do you ever see yourself getting into the analytics more as a full-time job down the line, either in terms of a front office position or as a writer? I mean, they're looking for people like you who have some experience in baseball and also have some

interest in this and have your skill set. Right. Well, in terms of future jobs, I don't ever think of it like that. It's like I said, it's something for me to do. It's fun. If there was something in the future that interests me, that was kind of a mold, like you said, a writer or working in a front office or something. And at that time and wherever I'll be in life, if that interests me, maybe I will look into it. But really, as of right now, it's just kind of a hobby. I don't foresee myself doing it future because there are a lot of people that are a lot better programmers understanding the analytics portion of it. But really, I think where my niche is, is maybe communicating it to players slightly

better. I know the article mentioned one situation where that came into effect, but I would like to make it so it's digestible for players. Because at this point, it's very hard for players to digest the information they're given. And it's not that they're not open-minded. A lot of players are open-minded, and you're starting to see it more and more with the activity picking up on Twitter. You can see players interested in analytics. Obviously, there's a lot of monetary value in it when it comes to free agent contracts. But I really think in terms of where I see it going, I really think it's going to be more of a mechanistic-like data approach.

It's going to be more if you do X, Y happens. And I know it's a failure game and it's not always going to be exact, but that's what players are kind of looking for. It's not the, what does a pitcher, what are the pitchers percentages for the day? It's what physically can you give me that will make me physically better at home plate, not thinking more at home plate. Yeah. Cause you do hear players talk about how they don't want too much of this information in their heads when they're in the game. So how do you balance that? I mean, how do you avoid thinking about your launch angle or whatever it is as you're actually trying to just swing the bat? that would be, like you said, a little bit too much to consume.

But I do evaluate. I have video. I don't, I can kind of estimate, you know, where it's coming off the bat and kind of where my launch angle is compared to the offset. You know, little things like that. I can see pitcher's velocity. I can see downward trajectory. So in a sense, I kind of in my head can go through some steps after the fact. It's not an in-game thing. It's an after game thing. But really, like I said, it's just different teachings in general, that they can

visually see why you're doing something rather than someone telling you this is going to happen if you do something. So what information, you already mentioned kind of a launch angle, but what other information do you find the most valuable? Do you study the most? Well, the thing I'm most interested in is obviously the physics of baseball and like i keep reiterating i think it's going to help players i think that in particular is going to be the area that's going to end up players are going to be more interested in because like i said it's going to be more hands-on but i also i mean i just i just love reading up on fangrass baseball perspectives i think those those websites do a really good job of really showing you value in players

that typically you wouldn't think there would be value. I mean, I think there was a lot of, not outrage, but a lot of outspokenness about Jason Hayward this offseason and his contract. And a lot of players are just mind just blown because of the dollars put into them. But when you really look at it, it was almost like an even contract. It's almost like Jason Hayward and the team had just as good of a deal together than it was one side over the other. And I think that once players start realizing that, that it can hurt them financially or help them financially, I think this offseason was big in that particular instance. And offseasons to come will be big in that. And they will start changing and evolving and maybe getting into more of the analytics based stuff. And do your stats over the last couple of seasons, would they look any different in any way if you

hadn't gone to the Rays and discovered baseball analysis and develop this passion for it? I mean, are there concrete ways in which you have become a better player or a different player because of it? Right. So I'd say the biggest difference in the way I play is I noticed early in my career, my professional career, that I am a guy with very low power. The ISO is very down. And I knew that having that, I need to maybe emphasize something more than the other. And that's when I picked up on BABIP and my contact rate. I've always had a pretty stable BABIP, always had a very, very good contact rate, more so than most. And I think that was the part I wanted to exploit more so than the other. Now, where you have to be, at least for myself, where you have to be aware of is that you

don't want to make contact just to make contact. It's not something that I go up there just to do on first pitch. But when I have two strikes, and I know that it's in my favor to put the ball in play because of the lack of power. Now, if you're talking about maybe Mike Trout or someone of a lot more power than me, it doesn't make any sense for him to do this. But just giving my chance and hoping that, you know, the odds are with me. It's kind of the, uh, the what's the movie, the odds are ever in your favor, the hunger games. That's kind of what I go up there looking at is like, I'm going to put myself in the, in the most optimal chance of at least giving myself a chance because I know no matter, even if I make the best contact I possibly can,

I know that my exit velocity isn't going to be enough to hit it out of center field in the air or opposite field in the air. It would have to be very much so on the pool side. And I think, too, when I go up to the plate, the way my swing plane is, I look to drive the ball slightly over the first, like I don't try to pop things up over the first baseman in BP. over the first, like I don't try to pop things up over the first baseman in BP. I try to hit line drives because it's been shown that that angle right over the first baseman with my velocity and my contact rate is probably the most optimal place for me to get extra base hits. So I really try to work on that. And I'm curious about how you chose the Pirates. I'm sure you had multiple teams that you could have gone to camp with this spring.

And we tend to think of players, you know, the top three agents available are not making decisions based on playing time and potential openings. They're just making decisions based on, you know, differences of $10 million or something. So I'm curious about how much thought, how much analysis went into picking the Pirates this spring. And then also, you know, historically, sabermetricians have sort of dismissed spring training and spring training performance and stats. And that's maybe changing a little bit, but often there's a tendency to just sort of write off what happens this month because, you know, the differences in the quality of competition and the small samples and all the rest. And your job depends on a small sample, right? You know, how you perform in this month, even if it's a small sample is going to dictate, you know,

how you spend the season. So how did you approach picking a team this off season? And how are you approaching spring training? So as I don't know how aware or how knowledgeable you guys are of the vast wasteland of minor league free agency is but I mean it is it is just that I mean it is really your agent they send out somewhat of a a mass email saying you're available and then teams come back and it's kind of this give and take you end up getting in my personal experience I got seven or eight teams contact me back. So there was some bargaining power, but really you just never know. I've been in situations where I've talked to GMs and they're telling me, hey, this is your job to lose. And I go into camp and I'm hitting in the fourth group on the second field, which if anyone doesn't know what that means, it's not a good

thing. If you're not hitting on the main field during BP, you're probably not making the team. So yeah, I've had different conversations. And as for like the actual process, I looked at their roster. I saw what their, I was looking to see what their needs were. I saw that Neil Huntington said that they were looking to go in a little bit of an on-base direction and a little bit less strikeout direction. I was just thinking those two phrases are exactly the kind of player that I am. And I was like, man, what a fit that would be. And luckily they were one of the teams that contacted me. And I also, and it's funny that you use the sample size suggestion. I said that when discussing with them, like I was like, I know this probably comes off as kind of weird, but I don't know if anyone's talked to

you or minor league free agents have talked to you about sample sizes. I just would like for you guys to judge me on my work rate in spring training, what you see, my actions, the velocity off the bat. I know you're not going to be able to particularly get that, but you can see that in BP. And also what I've done in the past, I think that's the most important things is, like you say, teams get wrapped up in this month, for better or worse, and you end up missing out on some players that probably could end up helping your ball club. And that's basically how I chose the Pirates is I kind of weaned my way and telling them, please don't look at sample sizes. And now that I'm doing well in spring training, I'm like, please look at sample sizes. It's really interesting. So it sounded like from

an article that we read that you do sometimes share some of your sabermetrics know-how with other players, and they certainly get some information from front offices as well. Do you see a lot of pushback from other players to sabermetrics, like a lot of resistance, and what do you think that comes from? Right, so in terms of players, and I kind of briefly discuss this a little bit, in terms of players, there are a lot of open-minded players. They really want to know things in their certain areas analytically. There are players that don't want anything to do with analytics. They totally say it's a wash, there's nothing there for me. I've been doing it like this my whole life. There's no reason to evolve. And you know what? I can understand on that level, just knowing that

there is kind of a fear factor involved. Because you really, if you don't know something, it's, let's just put it this way. If someone were to tell you or your class, let's say we ask a class of 30 kids who are in, I don't know, seventh grade. We ask them, what do you think of math? Probably a large majority of them would say, oh, math, really? That's my least favorite subject. And you just, you think to yourself, okay, well, we put in a group of guys like this, a big group of guys like this, and we ask them, what do we think of math and logic and analytics? And what do you think the answer is going to be? Especially guys that have been driven their whole career on strength and showing brawn. They're not going to be like, oh yeah,

please, let's have another. It's just not something that is palatable to them. So I think that's the biggest disconnect is that there is your analytics group and then you have your ballplayers and there's really no middleman. There's no, and teams do try. I mean, you're starting to see bench coaches or you're starting to see hitting coaches start to incorporate it a little bit more. But to the extent the front office may or may not want it, I don't know how that's going over.

But that's, like I said, that maybe that's something in the future I would be interested in because you have to come down on a soft landing because if you just throw everything at them, it just, it's that overload and they just don't want anything to do with it. So some of the biggest sort of disagreements between players and the sabermetric consensus are like things like hot streaks and lineup protection things like that and so i'm wondering like are there any of those topics that you particularly disagree with with the kind of sabermetric uh body dogma i guess uh and and how do you think about that well i i think the one disconnect that i can see sometimes is that we as ball players, we see the day-to-day activities of our fellow teammates and of the other team. So there are instinctual things, and I know this is the last

word that sabermetricians want me to use is instinctual, but there are, it's just natural. It's just, there's instinctual things you see on the field that you just, like, let's say someone hurts their hand during BP and you know that his bat speed isn't going to be the field that you just like, let's say someone hurts their hand during BP, and you know that his bat speed isn't going to be the same because you heard it from the visiting clubby. He's not getting around on a fastball a little bit more. Percentages say you should play here, but you know that day that this particular person isn't at his peak performance. And I think that's some of the things we miss in the analytics department is that these people, they're human. They have bad days, they get hurt, things aren't going right, they're mechanically not sound, and the percentages don't favor that particular instance that day. So I

would just like to see maybe a little less pushback on maybe positioning. I know it's very important and I'm 100% down with it when the information is in a vacuum and it's not maybe someone is injured or someone has had a family member that's sick or something. I just think there are other things that we can think of when that is going on. And I know that one of the things you've worked on this spring is demonstrating your positional versatility, and you've played a bunch of positions in the past. It seems like you've added even more to your repertoire. What are the potential difficulties of doing that that maybe are hard to see from the outside? In other words, you know, we always talk about Ben Zobrist or the late Tony Phillips, who was sort of Zobrist before Zobrist. And is it difficult? Is there an added difficulty to switching positions like that from game to game?

Does it make it more difficult? And secondly, are there more guys who are capable of doing that, do you think, than are actually doing that? You know, do guys get locked into whatever position they were playing in college or in their first year in the minors or whatever it is. And teams don't exploit their ability to play positions that they actually could play. Right. So I think there's a few things involved in switching positions. For myself, it's very dependent on the person. It's kind of a want to. It's do you want to take the extra time and effort to become this player?

It's so heralded in the major leagues to be an everyday blank position. You know what I'm saying? It's almost like a badge of honor when you can go out and say, hey, I'm the everyday shortstop or hey, I'm the everyday center fielder. And when someone asks you, hey, what do you do? And you're like, hey, I'm the everyday utility manielder. And when someone asks you, hey, what do you do? And you're like, hey, I'm the everyday utility man. It doesn't really have that same ring. And it kind of puts the player feeling like he's not as worthwhile

as maybe other players, which in reality is totally false. And you brought up some good points, Ben Zobris being one of them, that his versatility has actually made him more valuable. But it's still, like I said, it's that mindset of, do you want to do this? And I think for me, I'm very open-minded. Obviously, I'm in a situation that I need to be open-minded. I think if I wasn't, I would have a very hard time putting the team in a box. I don't think they would enjoy that too much.

And if I told them, hey, I think I'm the everyday second baseman or shortstop, or let's even say center fielder, I think Andrew McCutcheon needs to move over to right. I don't think they would look at me too keenly. Right. And teams are carrying so many pitchers these days that to deserve a spot on the bench, you almost have to play all the other positions, it seems like, because there just isn't enough room to carry an extra outfielder and an extra infielder and a pinch hitter. You kind of have to be all those things. Right. We're seeing the game move to more of a specialized inning by inning and probably sooner rather than later. We're going to see pitchers getting out in the third and fourth inning. I mean, I just think it's ultimately going to get to that point because

of the freshness and the bullpen arms are just getting that much better. And there's starting to be a lot more around. But yeah, no, I totally agree. I think that versatility is becoming more and more valuable. You're starting to see it a little bit more and more. And I think eventually it's going to become ubiquitous. It seems like one of the areas maybe sabermetrics hasn't fully embraced yet, but clearly is kind of the next wave is, you know, motion tracking technology, bio harnesses, all that sort of stuff. The pirates, it seems have been proactive with things like Zephyr and trying to prevent injuries. And then of course there are all sorts of swing training devices and MODIS and ZEP and even more advanced stuff. And I know the pirates in spring

this year have some kind of machine that allows you to practice against virtual representations of actual pitchers and their deliveries. So what direction do you see all of this stuff going? Is there a concern about it becoming too invasive or do you look at it as purely upside? How much do you think that players will embrace this stuff? How much do you think that players will embrace this stuff? And five years from now, will players just be wired up to all kinds of things all the time, just training like Ivan Drago or something? Exactly. I like that.

So my personal opinion, obviously, I love anything that can create an open-mindedness or an edge to the game. I love all the new technology. Not all of it, I think, is compatible, but I do love trying it. Now, that being said, I think there is a very large dialogue going on amongst the players nowadays about being careful about what we can or wouldn't want someone to use. Now, I say this because teams are providing these vehicles to help you in the game. But in reality, you have to obviously think about what are the long-term effects of this. Are they going to affect contracts?

Are they going to affect arbitration hearings? And I think that's where guys are really starting to get scared about. And it's going to make it very hard on these companies to succeed when you have Major League Baseball backing you, but none of the players want to use it. Or you're a private company and you're trying to go team to team and sell your product without the permission or the willing of Major League Baseball. I just think there's a disconnect there that will ultimately end up halting a lot of these things because players are scared. They're scared that you're going to be tracking their, I mean, the Pirates have a few things that track heart rate, brain

function, and they're scared that they aren't as optimal. They lose a night of sleep. They go out and they have a drink and they come in the next day and they log this information in. And then you get to the off season and you're in an arbitration hearing and it comes up. It's scary. Along the same lines, I went to the Saber Analytics Conference over the last weekend and there was a talk from a neuro scouting company called the Servo where they're measuring your brain activity while you look at a sort of a pitch effects based game. And that was sort of along what Ben was saying. So in some of these cases, there's this possibility that they'll be testing you, like testing your brain activity, for example. And then instead of it being used to improve you as a player, it'll be used essentially to weed you out. Like your elbow ligament is too small or your brain doesn't fire until the pitch is, you know, 10 feet away and it needs to be firing by 20 feet. So that seems like it would be really

important that you know what the team is doing with your information. Do you make a conscious effort to try and figure out what the team is actually using your stats for? So I really try hard, and I don't know if a lot of players do, but I really try hard to gain the information, just a physical copy, so I can kind of see what they're tracking, why they're tracking. They won't obviously, they're not going to be as forthright as you'd want them to be, because they could tell you, this is for some experiment we're doing on hand-eye coordination, but in reality, it could be something totally different. You just don't know how sincere they are in that sense. As for VR, the one thing, the one caveat I would say to that would be that we need to be careful about

what we think is game simulation and what is not. It's very hard to duplicate the intensity in a game than it is in VR. The senses heighten, obviously testosterone boost. And it's just something that you just can't do while you're playing a game. It's very hard to do. And the mindset, you're calculating a lot of things. When I'm up at bat, certain counts, I'm calculating percentages of what he likes to throw, what he doesn't like to throw. These things are going through my mind. And I just don't think I would have the same intent or the same focus level on a VR or a gaming system. So anyone that tells me or has the opinion of like, this is the actual game happening, I have a real hard time buying into that. And I read in those articles about how you've conducted your own studies on aging curves and

how certain skills hold up over time. Are there any major takeaways that you have had from that that apply to your own career or that you haven't necessarily seen in some of the research that's been published online? Right. So when I did that, I got a set of five or six major league players. And obviously, I'm using minor league stats. So the computation is obviously going to be a little skewed, and there are some constraints that are a little different. But yeah, so basically I'm just trying to keep as much information as possible to me when I'm going up to the plate as possible, and if it is the contact rate.

And I have nothing definitive. It's just something that I looked into. But I feel like contact rate and hand-eye coordination is something that ages very well. And it also depends on the player too. Some players, the dip, the plateau and the dip are really strong, but those are typically more of your power hitters. You see strikeouts go up, walk rates go down, and you see the age hit them a lot harder than it does a guy who's less power, more contact. So like I said, nothing definitive, but I do think that there's more into the contact rate and the strikeout rate than maybe analytics has dove into. I think there's something there to be

said. And when you're doing this analysis in R or Python or whatever, are you using data sets that were provided by your team? Or are you using the same sort of publicly accessible stuff? Yeah, publicly accessible stuff or anything that I can get my hands on. I mean, I've even been on the laptop for hours just digging up stats on baseball reference. I mean, it's laborious because I don't have some of the data that I would need for some of the things that I want to do. Obviously, it's a little easier with R. The community is really giving.

Obviously, GitHub is a very nice place where you can go and kind of see what other people have done. I made a repository on there. So I don't actually contribute to the community as much as I'd like to, but I'd like to think that I take away a lot, and I appreciate that. You're making the community cooler. So that's your contribution. Is there any question that you're looking forward to being able to answer with the advent of StatCast and all this motion tracking technology? Is there anything in particular that you're looking forward to that hasn't been easy to reveal up till now? Oh, of course. I think that's my main thing. That's the thing that I'm most focused on is where can we go from now? Is teaching going to go in a different direction? Are we going to be able to, and this is to the detriment of myself,

but are we going to be able to get more athletes into the game because the teaching of the swing path or the teaching of a ground ball and the throwing angle of let's say a ground ball in the six hole and your throwing angle and your launch angle are at one point and we need you to be optimal at this point. I think those are things that StatCast can show you. They can show you the velocity at which the ball is thrown. So I think once we get more data in that area and we start seeing more of a push towards getting closer to the most optimal ranges, I think the game will end up getting better. And I'm curious, you know, how in the dark is the typical player during spring training?

Is it just, you know, you show up and you hope that you don't get cut and from day to day you know nothing more than anyone else does other than your stats or, you know, how much feedback do you get? You guys are killing me with this. Okay. So how much feedback do you get from day to day on, you know,

how close you are to getting that spot that you're, you're trying for are 100% in the dark. I mean, you, the only things, the only things are that you can pick up on are, like I was explaining earlier, you can see your hitting groups. You can see your workout groups.

You can see the lineup. Are you starting a lot? Are you coming in a lot? Are they giving you off days? These are the things that players pick up on. If you go to a team and you're on every second tier team there, they have every second tier work group and you're coming into every single game and maybe there are days you don't even play. It typically doesn't bode well for you. It's not an indictment on

your playing. It's just something that maybe they've got a team picked out and they just want to stick with what they have and you need to prove yourself at the AAA level. And I've been that guy numerous times. I've been in four big league spring trainings and I've gotten tapped on the shoulder every single time. And the tap on the shoulder is the metaphorical you're getting cut. Actually, they literally come tap on your shoulder and say, hey, meet us in the manager's office. And then they go and they cut you down to the minor league system. Um, but yeah, but they, the communication is very minimal. Uh, you just play and really you just hope every week, right before you pick up your cash, they give you like a little envelope of cash every Monday. So you hope before every Monday, you're not that guy that you go up to the traveling secretary and they go, sorry, we don't have an envelope for you

today. That's basically how it works. All right. And lastly, when I'm not reading baseball blogs, I'm often reading astronomy blogs and nerding out that way. And I've seen you tweeting about gravitational waves and escape velocities, and you're wearing a SpaceX t-shirt right now. What is your interest in that area? I think that's kind of my new interest. My wife's family, if you want to talk about nerding out, I mean, they are, we have mechanical engineers, we have cancer researchers. Her brother is an astrophysicist. And I think that's where some of my interest came in. He actually works in Germany right now, and he travels the world just going from place to place, and that's his scope of expertise. So yeah, it's

something I'm very interested in. Obviously, my knowledge on that is probably not where I want it to be, but I think it's so fascinating. I mean, something that Einstein predicted to happen happening so many years later. And now that we know the two black holes merge and they send out these waves, I mean, it's just, it's incredible that people can think of this and the creativity it takes and not just the creativity, but the mathematical aptitude. I mean, when you think of Newton, you think of a man who possibly came out with the greatest math book ever at age 27. And when I'm, you know, I'm 28 now and I'm thinking to myself, what have I done? You know, I mean, obviously, you know, I play a game.

You made the major leagues. It's not so bad. My contribution to this world seems minimal after that. You've got some time yet. Yeah. Thank you. I have some time to catch up to Newton, only the greatest polymine ever. Thank you for that. Well, you've to catch up to Newton, only the greatest polymide ever. Thank you for that.

Well, you've made a contribution to this podcast. I could keep going. I haven't even asked you about your love of peanuts, the greatest of all comic strips, or your love of dachshunds, the greatest of all dog breeds. Our interests are eerily similar, but I will save that stuff for the sequel. Oh, man. We are really getting into this. It's funny because you don't actually know the research behind it because Steven Nesbitt, the guy who wrote the original article before Travis actually went more in depth with it. He actually, the reason this all happened was one day he came in and he's like, hey, man, I was looking at your Twitter yesterday and I saw that you know 50 digits of pi. Like, why do you know 50 digits? I'm like thinking to myself, hold on. How do you know I know 50 digits of pi? And I was like, oh, yeah, I tweeted that out almost two years ago or a year and a half ago.

So you must have sitting there just scrolling through my Twitter line and you come across this. And I'm just like, oh, my goodness. Like, I mean, this is just some of the stuff that I run into from day to day. But, you know, I gladly, he put me on the spot, too. And it was like one of those things, like, it'll never go away. But it's just one of those things when people are like, hey, can you do this right now for me so I can actually write about it? And if you can't, then you're just an idiot and you say you can do it. No, I'm not an idiot.

It's not a great term. But you know what I'm saying. You just look bad. So I'm sitting there doing it, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, oh, my gosh, this is actually happening. Oh, I'm not an idiot. It's not a great term, but you know what I'm saying? You just look bad. So I'm sitting there doing it, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, oh my gosh, this is actually happening. Oh man, I'm glad I did that Twitter report last night. So it's just stuff like that happens all the time to me for some reason. Yeah. I thought about asking you to do that, but I figured reciting Pi wouldn't be great on a podcast. So I will.

No, it doesn't. I don't think audio is the greatest place for it. And who knows? I could be cheating. I could be looking around or something. People wouldn't believe me anyway. So every time someone comes up, and it's funny, since Stephen wrote that article, I've probably had to recite it at least seven or eight times in the past week. And I probably recited it maybe three times seven years prior to that. So there it is. Well, we won't make you do it again.

I will cut this short before we totally cross into Chris Farley, Paul McCartney territory, but it's been a pleasure to talk to you. I know Joe Madden once said that he really likes your mind. And I think a lot of people on the internet probably feel the same way.

We wish you the best with the Pirates and anywhere else that you play and hope that you are known to many more people in the same way. We wish you the best with the Pirates and anywhere else that you play and hope that you are known to many more people in the near future. Well, I appreciate you guys having me on. It was a fun experience. And I always, you know, it's not the same conversations that I'm having in the clubhouse, but hopefully one day that we can get to that point where we can all come as a big community and really sit down and have these conversations. All right. Well, thanks again. Hopefully we'll talk to you again sometime and people can follow Cole on Twitter at Cole underscore Figueroa and watch him play baseball with pirates. I appreciate it. All right. That's it for today. Thank you to Cole Figueroa, who

can't be your new favorite player because he was my new favorite player first. So hands off. Thanks also to Rob Arthur. You can find Rob at FiveThirtyEight and elsewhere and on Twitter at NoLittlePlans with underscores between those words. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. You can email us at podcast at BaseballPerspectives.com or message us through Patreon. You can also rate and review the podcast on iTunes and join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can also get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the baseball reference play index. If you use the coupon code BP,

you can buy our book. It's called the only rule is it has to work and it comes out on May 3rd. It's the story of how Sam Miller and I ran the baseball operations department for an independent league team. This new Miss Stompers, last summer and tried to put together a whole team full of Cole Figueroas. Today's five Patreon supporters in the spotlight, Aaron Young, Tyler Crosby, Michael Bruffy, Ryan Gallagher, and Matthew Marsden. Thank you all. That's it for this weekend. We will be back on Monday with our preview for the Washington Nationals. Yes, you are. Hey, everybody is just about the same. Just about the same.

Hey, when you finally see from where we came. From where we came. Ah, la, la, la, la. La, la, la, la. had a good time yeah i really enjoyed it you guys kept me on my toes a little bit so i appreciate it i was uh slightly nervous i mean i didn't really know what to expect i like i said i was uh going through some i was going through my head and i was like, in the first instance I think of, I'm like, man, should I go study for this? Should I reread Albert Einstein's general relativity theory and make sure I'm up to date on all my SpaceX things or whatnot?