Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 893: Hello, Julio Urias

Episode Date: May 27, 2016

Ben and Sam talk to Los Angeles Times Dodgers beat writer Andy McCullough about the arrival of Julio Urias, the struggles of Yasiel Puig, the excellence of Clayton Kershaw and, reluctantly…politics?

Love you, you were all mine Love me, I was yours right I was yours right I was nineteen Good morning and welcome to episode 893 of Effectively Wild Oh, I'm fine ball prospectus hello hey dodgers are in new york tonight to play the mets and there is no shortage of intriguing storylines chase utley faces off against the team that might still bear him ill will from his infamous slide last october maybe the best certainly the most precocious pitching prospect in baseball makes his major league debut and former mets beat writer andy mccullough

returns to the ballpark where he debuted as a beat writer, not only as the beat writer for the Dodgers for the LA Times, but as the host of a brand new baseball podcast. And we are going to discuss all three of those important stories today, and probably more. And we are welcoming in Andy McCullough, one of our favorite guests on this podcast, who has now just started his solo career and doesn't really need this podcast platform anymore because he has his own. It's not a solo. It's not a solo career, though. No, it's more of a duo still. It's a super group.

I'm definitely the less attractive member of the group with me and Pete, for sure. So you started the Los Angeles Times baseball podcast just recently, just this past week with Pedro Mora. Still searching for a name, yeah. I gave you a perfect name. What was it? I'm trying to remember. Yeah, I am too. I think it was I Know Andre Ethier, which is a reference to my favorite Fire Joe Morgan post of all time. Oh, yeah. The old scout.

Is that the one with whenever they should be laying down sack fonts they're trying on designer jeans no this is the one with the old scout yeah the old corner who speaks up exactly yeah wait a minute wait a minute i know andre ethier is what i was i wanted you to name your podcast wait a minute i know andre ethier oh okay we had some good suggestions but they're all kind of like copyright infringements. Like someone suggested like the Lonesome Crowded West, which I really like. Maybe we get sued by Isaac Brock. And then, you know, there's been a couple other ones.

We were thinking about calling it the Freeway Series or I don't know. Pedro just wants to call it Litcast because it's lit. So I'm just like welcome to lit cast you know and everyone knows because this podcast is you know this podcast is woke or whatever the kids are saying these days uh but yeah you know we're i don't know like we're we'll see how it goes uh it basically you know our bosses you know pedro and i have been friends for a while and uh you know we both got hired by the time this winter and our bosses kind of enjoyed how we tend to argue about everything uh when it comes to baseball Pedro has christened me like a

a baseball republican if that makes sense um which I sort of agree with I guess um and how you know he's like you know like he's a lefty when it comes to baseball and I'm you know more conservative so um that's you know a good uh it's a baseball and I'm, you know, more conservative. So that's, you know, a good, it's a good contrast, I guess he, you know, is obsessed with like X tip and, you know, shit that didn't actually happen. And, you know, I think advanced metrics are really important, but I also think it's also important not to lose track of what actually occurred in the game. And when Pedro listens to this,

he's going to be serious with my characterization of his opinion as he always is. And so, yeah, you know, we try to do it once a week and hopefully, of his opinion, as he always is. So yeah, we're trying to do it once a week, and hopefully people will want to listen. There's definitely room for more baseball podcasts. There definitely are not enough. Hey, is Chinwe Sao still on the roster? No. Ah, I was going to suggest that you could call it Lonesome Sao-ded West. Horrible.

Yeah, there's some, yeah. Chinwe Sow had an interesting weekend for sure with the Dodgers. You should have him on. We dubbed him the most interesting Wikipedia page in baseball last year. Yeah, there's a six-year gap in his baseball reference page. It's kind of interesting. But, you know, match fixing will do that to you. Yeah, well, the first episode featured some great Kershaw trout banter,

and it also featured Pedro getting caught between saying velo and velocity and saying velocity, which is something I really enjoyed. You'll work those kinks out. Sam and I never misspeak or mispronounce anything anymore. No, no, for sure. It's something you you get out of your system early so yeah moving on to the smaller stories would you care to set up the starting pitcher matchup particularly the dodgers side yeah who is starting for the mets jake degrom or yeah okay yeah degrom good pitcher you know slightly overrated hair but that's fine.

Probably the second best pitcher on the Mets staff. That's not why you're asking me. So yeah, Julio Urias is coming up. It's going to be fun. We're going to figure out how exactly to pronounce his last name because everyone has a different take on it. How would you guys say his last name is? Scott Boris said Urias when I interviewed him this offseason.

Okay, good name drop. Yeah, I'd go with that too until told otherwise. Yeah, I believe it's Urias. But, you know, sometimes I'll slip and just say Urias. But anyway, Julio Urias is coming up. He's into Julio. He'll be up. He's a fantastic young prospect.

He's 19 years old, grows hard, but has really good velocity, especially from the left side with his fastball. Pretty decent command, has two, you know, off-speed pitches that work. He's got a solid curveball and a change-up that's really effective. He's got 27 scoreless innings in a row with Oklahoma City in the PCL, just basically just crushing AAA. He has a 110 ERA in AAA this year, and, you know, he's ready to go. And he's been ready to go for a few weeks now. The Dodgers haven't brought him up yet, but Alex Wood kind of had a hiccup with his tricep,

and so he gets pushed back until Monday. So that clears some space, you know, in the rotation schedule, I guess. And so they're going to start Urias. And, you know, it's not the smallest stage to start him on, that's for sure. But it's, it'll be, it'll be interesting, you know, it'll be interesting to see what his pitch count is. It'll be interesting to see, you know, what they do with him after Friday night. There's a couple of different ways they could go, but, you know, Dodgers fans have been clamoring for him for a while and he's a guy who can certainly help the team. help the team. So you tweeted a quote from Dave Roberts a couple days ago where he was asked if he had talked to the front office about bringing him up and whether he was asking for him to be brought up. And Roberts said no, and then sort of like, I guess, paused or something and said, they already know that I want him. And it's sort of unusual for, maybe you can correct me, this might be wrong, but we get the impression that it's sort of unusual for teams to buy into the hype of

minor leaguers that fans might fall for. There's always sort of a, well, wait until he gets up here. Don't put too much pressure on him. It's a big jump. And there's always a sort of an anti-rookie bias anyway. And so you'll rarely see a team, unless it's somebody maybe, I don't even know if it's somebody extremely good, but you'll rarely see a team hype a guy who's coming up. So is there any, has there been any effort at quelling this excitement? Well, I don't think they've necessarily done anything to hype him up. I don't think, you know,

they've like, you know, you don't see Andrew Friedman coming out and being like, hey guys, you will not believe how good this kid's going to be when he comes up, you know, like, they're very measured in their commentary of him, but, you know, Urias is creating the hype himself with his performance, like, the Dodgers are, you know, they're interesting in that they're not going to talk about how great he is, but they're also not going to sit there and say, like, well, you know, he needs to work on X, he needs to work on Y, he needs to work on Z, you know, not very good at this, this when he comes up he's only going to be able to do that you know what i mean like they're not going to give you the accurate scouting report of sort of what the issues might be for him when he comes up so i think they've kind of been almost like

laissez-faire and you know just letting this you know build into a you know pretty big deal but again i mean the guy's like he was what like the number five prospect in you know the game, like coming into this year or something like that. He's certainly top 10. He's probably the highest left-handed pitching prospect for sure. There's going to be hype with that regardless. So they haven't gone out of their way to shut it down, but I don't think they've been sort of cranking up a PR machine about him either. Obviously the headline is his age. He's going to be the youngest guy to debut, the first teenager to debut since Madison Bumgarner in 2009. And of course, he was eight years younger than the average age in the PCL. And he was three years younger than

the next youngest guy who had made a start at that level. And he was also the best pitcher at that level. So do you know anything about his social life? Because, you know, you read stories about him and it sounds like those stories about super genius 13 year olds who graduate from college and they're sort of like the mascot of the class or they don't really have a normal childhood or a normal teenage life because they are so brilliant and so successful at a young age. So do you know anything about how he fits in on a team and what he does on his downtime if he has any? I mean, I don't really know what his interior life looks like. I mean, I haven't had a ton of chances to interact with him, but everything I've heard, you know, is that

he fits in perfectly fine, you know, and the sport's kind of a sport is kind of a meritocracy. He's earned the praise and stuff that he's gotten with the way he's performed over the years. I don't think there'll be too much of an issue in terms of socialization or whatever the proper word is into the clubhouse dynamic. There's a bunch of veteran guys on the team who hopefully

I'm sure they'll welcome him or whatever, but you know, it's going to be interesting. I mean, it is very rare to have a, you know, a 19 year old kid running around with professional baseball players. So that I, you know, I don't really know how that's going to go just yet, but you know, it's certainly an interesting dynamic. A lot of attention has been paid to his workload because the Dodgers have been incredibly careful with him. And Scott Boris, of course, has advocated for that, but it seems like the Dodgers are completely on the same page. He's made, what, 63 career minor league starts, and he's never gone more than six innings

in any of them. He's been taken out after no hitters after 77 pitches. It's sort of hard to project exactly how you use a guy like that in the major leagues, especially for a team that is trying to contend and trying to win right now. And there was a lot of talk last month that he would be coming up in the bullpen and maybe he will go back there soon. So what are the expectations for how you transition a real outlier like this in so many respects to a major league team that's trying to win yeah i would think i would suspect that he goes into the bullpen after friday night maybe he makes one more start after that because you know they gotta have a placeholder for kenjin ryu who's going to be up uh relatively shortly

he's got two starts left on his rehab assignment. And I would think, you know, they keep him in the bullpen pitching, you know, probably if he can handle it, probably in relatively high leverage spots. And then in August or September, you know, if they're kind of making a push, they could transition him back to the rotation and, you know, kind of still preserve the innings while keeping him sort of, you know, fresh, I guess, and keeping him in the majors because, you know, kind of still preserve the innings while keeping him sort of, you know, fresh, I guess, and keeping him in the majors. Because, you know, he doesn't really have anything left to prove in the minor leagues, you know.

And so his value, you know, with the way he's dominating the minor league competition, it's pretty clear, you know, he's earned a shot to face major league competition. So you'd like him to maybe learn how to go through a lineup three times, but he's probably going to have to learn how to do that at the big league level anyway, because it's just his talent doesn't permit him to develop a little slower, if that makes sense. Did they put an innings goal on him at the beginning of the year?

Did they do the foolish thing of putting any number on him at all? No, they would not do that, no. I mean, they have a number, obviously. Right, yeah. If Steven Strasburg has taught us anything, it's just saying the number aloud. So, yeah, they have a number, but they haven if steven strasburg has taught us anything yeah say the number aloud so um yeah they have a number but they haven't so what he is a left-handed pitcher and he has held right-handed batters to a 449 ops in triple a this year that's pretty good yeah i think that's change-up related right yeah i guess so is there an expectation that there's a lot of projection left or that he is not a finished product in important ways? Or is he just preternaturally polished at this age and he's ready right now and he might not get that much better than this, but this is, he's pretty polished. I mean, that's why he's up so quickly, you know, is because, you know, he has an advanced set of skills. I mean, you know, the fastball command can always get better.

It'll be interesting to see how his off-speed stuff plays, you know, whether big leaguers are able to identify it or whether, you know, if you see them the way it's done to minor league hitters. So, but no, it's not the sort of thing where he's, he's got a lot of room to grow. You know, there's obviously, like he's not raw. He's certainly not raw. There's a lot of polish there. How does the Dodgers staff stack up right now?

Because there were so many injury problems in spring training, and they're getting some of those guys back. You mentioned Ryu and McCarthy's coming back. So are they about to have the full complement of arms that they hope to have coming into the season? Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm always with Ryu. He's coming off shoulder surgery, so it's hard to totally bank on him. Brett Anderson's still down for a while, so he's not ready to contribute. And, you know, Brandon McCarthy is still, you know, at least, you know, maybe six weeks away, maybe a month away.

So, yeah, I mean, they're getting there. Jose De Leon had shoulder issues, and he's been down for a while. That's a pretty sizable loss because he and Urias were considered the two big pitching prospects, and so it doesn't seem like De Leon's going to be able to contribute anytime soon. But, yeah, I mean, they've gotten some good starts out of Alex Wood. He's found something in the last month or so that's really helped.

Scott Kazma has been up and down. Kenta Maeda has definitely regressed. He's kind of become a little reticent about throwing a fastball, which has hurt him a decent amount in his past few games. And then Clayton Kershaw is head and shoulders above everyone else in the sport. So they're kind of propped up by Kershaw in a lot of ways, but that could change in the next month or so. Ken Rosenthal tweeted earlier today

A quote that he got from Zach Greinke This spring who described Urias as the most perfect Pitching prospect I've ever seen And Greinke said it was because he's left handed Because the stuff is plus plus And because quote he's nasty But not so nasty you think he'll blow out

Which is an interesting Place that we are in where you kind of get more excited about a pitching prospect if he doesn't throw 100 because he might actually last for a little while. But how does he stack up to, you know, the flamethrowing phenoms that we get really excited about as a spectator experience is he very fun to watch is he visually very impressive well i mean he can get up to 97 you know which from the left side is pretty devastating you know he's not like a cinder guard like video game type pitcher but then again you know i don't think there's really anyone like that but yeah i mean the change up can really really fool hitters

and you know the curveball definitely plays so um there's a lot of weapons there for him to, you know, to go after hitters, you know. And when he's – like a couple times in spring he pitched, he wasn't particularly sharp and, you know, he got hit around a little bit, didn't look particularly great. But, you know, scouts who have seen him when he's on say, you know, he's lights out, you know. He's got the tools.

He's got the, you know, the sort of the physique you'd want. He's like 6'2", 200, you know, kind of not too small, not too big. You know, the levers aren't too long if you worry about them, you know, blowing out. So there's a lot to like there for sure. And he has an interesting origin story, right? He came from the same scouting trip in Mexico that produced Yasiel Puig and the Dodgers were able to sign him because there were all these unsubstantiated false rumors going around about his health that were completely false and Logan White just ignored those and signed him because he was really good.

Well, I know he had the issue with his eye before he had surgery on that last year to have it sort of repaired. So yeah, I mean, there's been some, I guess, technical red flags there, but honestly, I'm forgetting the origin story at this point. I can tell you about Lorenzo Cain, though, if you want. So I'm curious about the weaknesses of the team because last year's Dodgers led the National League in weighted runs created plus by non-pitchers. And this year's version ranks 11th in that category.

This team just hasn't hit. Will it hit, do you think? Potentially. I mean, they've got guys who have hit before. You know, Adrian Gonzalez will probably bounce back a little bit. He's definitely been off his normal production this year. I think he's got, I'm looking at now, he's got a 740 OPS, 106 OPS plus.

That's well below kind of what you'd expect from him. You know, Yaziel Puig, I guess we'll get to him. He's just been a real kind of disaster at the plate. Really disappointing. Pretty clearly he's been good in the field, but disappointing at the plate. Yasmany Grandal batting like 190. Corey Seager's been up and down. Justin Turner's been well below what he did the past couple years. They're getting

great seasons out of Jock Peterson and Trace Thompson and Chase Utley, but yeah, there's room to improve there, but it's going to have to come from some of these more established guys. There have been some articles recently about how Puig has been very easy to pitch to and he's been swinging through a ton of stuff on the outside part of the plate and just has been predictable and has had obvious weaknesses that teams have been able to exploit. At the same time now, he's had the sort of occasional trademark mental lapses from time to time. Do you draw any kind of connection between those two things, having watched him? Like, do you blame his overall struggles at the plate on a failure to

concentrate or work or any of that? Or are those two completely separate issues? I think it might almost be the other way. Like, if we're going to kind of psychoanalyze, I'd say the lapses in concentration come from frustration about the lack of production that's kind of you know the psychoanalysis that's making the rounds i guess you know within the club that you know because he's not hitting he's getting frustrated and you know that sort of thing you know when he's hitting he's kind of locked in and you know committed to sort of what's going on and so yeah i mean it was not a great weekend or sunday slash uh whatever it was t a great weekend or Sunday slash whatever

it was Tuesday for him. You know, he didn't have a really good stand where, you know, he made this sort of mental mistake in, you know, in Sunday afternoon in San Diego, where he just basically didn't advance on a bunt by A.J. Ellis that would have put him in scoring position for, you know, a sack fly. And, you know, instead of getting a sack fly in the ninth inning, the Dodgers had to play a 17 inning game and use all their pitchers and, you know, a sack fly. And, you know, instead of getting a sack fly in the ninth inning, the Dodgers had to play a 17 inning game and use all their pitchers and, you know, just burn the entire bullpen to the ground. And then a couple of days later, you know, he hits a towering drive to right and he sort of pimps it at the plate. And then, you know, it goes off the wall and Dave Roberts pulled him out of the game after that, you know,

just basically said that it's unacceptable. And, you know, it puts the manager in a tough spot. It, you know, it puts, you know, it puts the manager in a tough spot. It, you know, it puts, you know, basically it puts Dave in a tough spot because he has to simultaneously enforce these standards while still defending Puig to the public. And it, you know, makes for an awkward sort of dance there. But, you know, that's part of the gig of managing the doctors, you know, is that you have to sort of manage personalities. And Puig has a very,

Puig has one that commands a decent amount of attention. Dave had to go get him out of the clubhouse, you know, that same Tuesday because he just was not like on the field with the team during batting practice. He took BP and then just walked off and, you know, Dave had to come and get him and bring him back onto the field and then go back to managing everyone else. So it's, you know, it's part of the job, but it's starting to, you know, creep back into being part of the discussion, you know, just sort of the standard yearly check now, they're not getting the offense that they've expected. Their bullpen's been bad.

There's some unpleasant storylines. And Urias comes up and, you know, he's sort of a, you know, he's necessary because they're losing. And if the offense was scoring, you know, an extra run per game, and if the bullpen had held three extra leads, now that I've laid all that out and wandered around, let me just ask you this. Does him coming up do you think deviate from what their development plan was for him or is it is this exactly what their development plan is for him

and what they think is best for him and really has nothing to do with um what's going on in the standings well the hard part is they won't really say what their developmental plan is for you know they're they're sort of deliberately vague about you know what they were trying to accomplish with them this year you know when they wanted him up you know like normally like you've got a pitching prospect you know like i remember like covering uh the mets like in i want to say 2012 when matt harvey debuted you know you talk to people at the beginning of the year and you're like hey like when you think it'll be ready like that fall goes well you know june or july like you don't really hear that about urius you know the dodgers like you know go out of their way to try and not set dates on some

of these things and that makes it tougher to kind of discern you know what the plan is you know what they're trying to accomplish what he still needs to fix in the minors etc etc so i don't know if this is too far a deviation from you know what they were trying to do. But, you know, look, I mean, this guy is clearly one of the best 25 players in the organization right now. And, you know, you're a team that's trying to win right now, and you're trying to also conserve his inning. So, you know, he's not going to pitch 200 innings. So he's not going to pitch a full season in the minor leagues, you know, where he's burning

those innings up, you know, facing, you know, whatever, like the Memphis Redbirds or whomever. So you might as well have him in the majors. That may be accelerated slightly because of, you know, what's been going on with the bullpen and how the rotation's kind of been up and down. But I don't think it's necessarily like going to hamper his development, especially if they are very committed to not stretching him out excessively this year because he wasn't able to throw a cut of winning last year. So, you know, I don't think it's a huge deviation from whatever it was they had planned going into the season. When I did talk to Boris, one of his big things is that he doesn't think that starting pitchers generally should be rushed to the majors. He doesn't seem to be that interested in them starting their service time clocks. He would

rather see them be developed a little slowly. And he, you know, specifically called out the industry for being a little bit too eager to start drawing from these young arms. And so my guess is that he would say that this is not necessarily great for Urias' development, although I didn't ask him specifically. And so if I were an LA columnist and I were really, if I just was running out of ways to write anti-Puig columns, I would probably wait for Arias to have like a sore shoulder next spring and then write a column blaming Puig for not hitting this year. Sure. Like if it weren't, if Puig were, yeah, if Puig were better than he would have, Arias would have been taking it easy down in AAA. Too much was put on.

So you also mentioned. I'll pass the horn to Plasky. I'll and too much was put on. So you also mentioned... I'll pass the horn to Plaschke. I'll let him know what he thinks. Thank you. You also mentioned yesterday that Real Big Fish was playing in the clubhouse. Now we're getting to the good stuff. So Brian Kilpatrick tweeted at me that Turn the Radio Off, the album from which that song is from, and really the album that Real Big Fish is important for,

came out the day after Urias was born. And so I'm wondering, based on how you know the music is selected, and based on when you think that they knew that they were going to make this move, is there any chance whatsoever that they were sort of speaking in musical code to you? I will say that the one thing, well, there's many things that have disappointed me after spending so much time covering baseball over the last seven years, but probably the biggest disappointment is the utter lack of musical knowledge among the people I cover. So I would say no, I would say no. But if so, I mean, that would be a great episode of

The X-Files or whatever. Well, the lack of musical knowledge, though, seems to be a point in this conspiracy's favor because you only need one person to know enough to program it in. And it otherwise seems very unlikely that anybody on the Dodgers, anybody who controls the Dodgers iPod is big on third wave late 90s ska. I honestly don't know how. I think it was like someone had like a reggae station on Pandora and it just came on accidentally. Oh, okay.

Yeah. So I don't think, it was definitely part of like a curated playlist. So I, yeah, it was, yeah. Unfortunately, I'm sorry. All right. Has Roberts shown himself to be as good a manager of men as Don Mattingly was reputed to be? Has he handled all this stuff as well as anyone could be expected to handle it? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's the standard kind of quibbles, you know,

that players have about, you know, whatever, about, you know, like the managerial bullpen moves, you know, some of you'll go out and grab me like, hey, you know, what do you think we should have done this or that last night? But I think that's neither here nor there really certainly not nearly to the amount that i heard it covering you know that he was for two years so that's the funny thing too is like people were kind of like sometimes they'll say like man like do you believe what dave did last night bringing in the righty to to face melina and i'm like dude i covered the royals man you should see sc Downs facing Johnny Gomes. Like, you know, like I've

seen some stuff bullpen wise. So I think, I think he's been fine. You know, I think he, I think he definitely earned some cred in the clubhouse by taking Puig out. He earned cred from the sort of players who want to see hustle and that sort of thing. You know, I don't think it's too hard to go down the roster and figure out who some of those guys might be. But, you know, so I think that was probably a good move in his favor. But, you know, for the most part, I mean, the players seem to like each other. You know, they're an okay team. They probably should be better.

They maybe will get better. But, you know, of the issues they have, Roberts is certainly probably not near the top. If I could ask one question about the Julio Urias of over 20 pitchers, Clayton Kershaw, how do you write a game story about Clayton Kershaw now? Because I was reading your most recent one, and you've already pulled out the incredibly complimentary quote, right? Dave Roberts told you that he wants 25 Clayton Kershaws.

He's the pitcher ofhaws. He's the pitcher of a lifetime. He's the baseball player of a generation. So you can't really find a more hyperbolic quote than that. And then there are the quotes about how, you know, the expectations are so high, but he keeps exceeding them and you can't use that over and over. So what's your, what's your approach for next time he throws a complete game shutout with 10 strikeouts? And you'll wonder why Dylan Hernandez was laughing at me when he read that story. Because he's like, dude, I've been writing this for seven years. And yeah, I mean, I've gone to the well of the lead of no movement in the bullpen.

I've gone to the well of the crowd shouting as he comes back out for the ninth inning. Yeah, I'm gone to the bag of tricks already in the first two months covering kershaw so um slightly different covering jeremy guthrie that's for sure yeah i mean it's a challenge but i think you know you just try and put what he's doing and who he is in in a historical context and and you know you try and do it uh in the context of the season and what his every fifth day means to this team. I mean, he really is like Atlas, you know, they can't afford to lose when he pitches. He's kind of propping the team up. They're like nine and one when he pitches and

sub 500, you know, at every other game. So, yeah, I mean, I'm curious to see how I can fake it for the rest of the year, but we'll figure it out. I mean, he's been really fun to watch and, I mean, I'm curious to see how I can fake it for the rest of the year. But we'll figure it out. I mean, he's been really fun to watch. And, you know, I'm always a fan of quick games. So, you know, that's also greatly appreciated. Yeah. Is there an accepted explanation for why he has reached an even higher level this year? I mean, the level of competition has definitely been a little bit lesser the past few weeks. You know he's had games against like the Reds and the Padres and that sort of thing. So,

but you know, he's, he's amazing. I mean, he probably should have won the Cy Young last year, I think, you know, or you could at least make a very compelling case that he could have won the Cy Young last year over Jake Arrieta with as good as Arrieta pitched. You know, he's striking out guys that, you know, at a really obscene rate and he's not walking anyone. You know, he's kind of, he talks about how, you know, he's learned stuff from guys like Dan Heron about like, you know, you just throw the ball over the plate and sometimes, you know, they'll hit it at someone.

You don't really, don't be afraid to challenge someone, you know, 2-0, especially when your stuff plays well. So, you know, that sort of confidence combined with the fact that he's, you know, throws 94 from the left side with great. So, you know, that sort of confidence combined with the fact that he's, you know, throws 94 from the left side with great command and, you know, the best curveball in baseball and probably the best slider in baseball. You know, he's got incredible stuff and he's got incredible determination. You know, he never takes a day off.

It's rare to see him taking, you know, a 10-minute break before, you know, even before a game on days when he doesn't pitch to the point where Dave Roberts is sometimes wary of even trying to talk to him, like he's afraid he'll be interrupting his routine and pissing him off. So he's just incredibly dedicated to his craft and incredibly talented and incredibly driven. You know, he really is a generational talent. I'm so disappointed. I had hoped to have a better podcast title. I've been trying to think of a better podcast title this whole time. What have you got so far? I just don't even have anything I want to share with you. Oh, that's depressing.

I know. I don't want to go through 10 mediocre ones to find one that catches you at the right moment. When I give you one, I want to give you one. Hey, can I ask you guys a question that I've been wondering about? Yeah, sure. Hey, are you guys as is as nervous about the election as I am? Pretty nervous. Yeah. Do you and I, you know, I don't think based on, you know, times policy, I'm really allowed to discuss my political leanings, but it probably won't be too hard to discern. But do you feel like a sense of like, fear that, you know, in history 50 years from now, you know, someone will ask you, what were you doing when, you know, this was going on?

You'll say, oh, I was writing about baseball. Like, do you feel like a sense of like, you know, that you're kind of making a mistake with your given profession? You know, did you read the article in The New Yorker about two months ago? I think it was Jill Lepore on children and social services. It was probably three months ago. And reading that made me feel that way. I thought I have to answer for myself. Because really there are a lot of extremely important jobs that are not filled by enough qualified people.

So in this case particularly, I don't know if I feel exactly that way. I have, so far as I know, I've never made a political statement in public because who cares, right? Who, like really who cares? Like it's the most self-indulgent thing to be like, well, my opinion is this. And I've thought about it in the last few days, which is already, like I already would like me less if just hearing me say that. Right. Because like the idea that it matters at all. I just do. I sort of want to just

say what I think about things just so that I can contribute to the normalizing of good behavior and to resist the normalizing of bad behavior. So I'm like I'm not trying to convince anybody. I just want to sort of make it clear that like, you know, this is how I feel. And so, you know, this is, I'm a normal person who feels this way. And this is what I think that our, you know, our culture should be about. But, you know, you can't do that. You can't do that. If you do that, you're immediately, you're immediately in doing the same thing that Kurt

Schilling is doing, just hopefully a little bit less obnoxiously. Right. I mean, I've never voted because I feel like journalists probably shouldn't, because, you know, if theoretically someday, you know, I start covering politics, I don't want to have a record of kind of what my opinions are about things, I guess. And maybe that's stupid because I have voted for like BBWA awards. But I'm kind of at the point where I'm like, I don't know if I can really, there's gotta be something I can, I can do here. It's, I don't know. It's just been, that's kind of like all I think about at this point is the election. It's very, uh, yeah, it's been, uh, it's very time consuming and, uh, and energy consuming mentally. It's the, uh, it's yeah, it's the OJ trial of, of our generation.

I think I'm obsessed with it. Slightly bigger consequences. But yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, I listen to this late podcast about one of the candidates daily. I read basically like every major newspaper's coverage every day. So if you're wondering why I don't know Julio Urias' origin story, it's probably because I've just been studying everything else and just

being fearful and wondering what's going to happen. Yeah, when we were when we had Carson on yesterday, I talked about the the horror of realizing that you've accidentally clicked on the Hawk Harrelson broadcast of the game that you're going to and having to like immediately backtrack. The equivalent for me now is that when I will, I might say I'm not admitting this necessarily, but I might 50, 60 times a day search one of the candidates' names on Twitter. And every once in a while, I'll accidentally click the live button, which means I'm not just seeing the top tweets, but all of them. And I just vomit all over. It's scary, man. It's scary.'s it's really scary and i feel like as reporters you know we're

we're not supposed to say what we think and feel and i and i you know you guys know it so we almost made it through an entire podcast without talking about matt harvey's behavior with the media but as you guys know based on my feeling sort of like the player tribune and stuff like i think the fourth estate is really important to be a you know an unbiased independent arbiter but it's just like some of this stuff is like oh man this is this is gonna be a really rough rough summer and fall getting through this hey ben who you voting for it'd be nice if we could all just skip two decades to the f FX miniseries about this summer instead of actually watching the summer. But it's tough because I kind of feel that anyone that we would be likely to

talk to in most situations would be someone who agrees with us already. And so it's hard not to preach to the choir, except there's a very large... That's your own fault for dealing with reasonable people, though. Yes. Well, there's a very large non-choir out there somewhere, but it's hard to reach via the normal channels. It may potentially be a bigger choir. Right. That's the

scary part, is the other choir might be bigger. It is like the entire country might be on the verge of clicking on the White Sox away broadcast when there are better broadcast options available yeah well i'm glad no it's good to yeah i know this is kind of a bummer and i'm sure there'll be cranks on the facebook page complaining or whatever but i just i don't i

was just curious because you know you guys are both smart and like you're you know interested in more than baseball and it's just kind of, you know, it's a really historic time. And I'm kind of wondering, you know, why I'm spending time writing about, you know, like tricep injuries. But that's, I guess, neither here nor there. I did a podcast about video games yesterday, so I'm doing my part. Andy, are you saying that you would have more impact if you were writing about politics? Because I don't get the feeling that writing about politics does a whole lot either. Or are you saying that you should be doing something like to contribute to the world? Yeah, that I don't know. That I don't know. I just I just

worry that if the election goes a certain way, that I will look up many, many years down the road and just be like, oh, crap. Like, you know, like I did not. I mean, you know, maybe there was something I could have done or whatever. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And maybe it's not even a, you know, and that's obviously a pretty outrageous statement to make, you know, in terms of like my own impact. But it's just, I don't know. That's just what I think about because I, it's what I think about because, you know, I have an inflated sense of self. I'm sort of glad that you forced me to admit that I also am obsessed with this sort of tabloid show because I have it has been something I've mostly kept secret and it feels somewhat honest to admit that I actually

have this incredibly frivolous interest in this incredibly serious thing and that I indulge it to a somewhat shameful degree so most of the time I think it's sort of a competitive advantage not to pay too much attention to politics because everyone else is and they're spending hours on it. And almost everyone has zero impact on the outcome and zero impact on, you know, anyone else's beliefs or preferences. And so in most cases, I figure that by ignoring it, I save myself a lot of time and trouble and heartache. In most cases, also, I think there isn't so much of a difference between the candidates that I get worked up about it one way or another. This might be the exception. But as we've discussed on this podcast before, the worst thing you can do if you're trying to persuade someone of something is to state the opposing belief outright, right? And so in a sense, we are doing the best we can by not trying to convince

anyone of anything. Plus, I'm generally an optimist who believes that things are on the whole getting better over time and that many of the current crises mirror past precedents that we survived and surmounted. So I try to spend my spare time reading astronomy blogs and learning about things that happened on scales so vast enough eons ago that they make any present problems seem fleeting and inconsequential. Plus, aren't sports supposed to be the refuge in times of turmoil? That's why we kept baseball going during World Wars. A couple weeks ago, I was speaking at an event that Nate Silver was also speaking at,

and he made a firm no-politics resolution, and he actually read from a piece he had written about whether Alex Gordon should have tried to score in the 2014 World Series. So can't we pretend that all is well? Must we politicize the podcast? Yeah, yeah, whistling past the graveyard. I'm excited. All right, so the podcast? Yeah, yeah. Whistling past the graveyard. I'm excited.

Alright, so, Julio Urias pitches tonight. I'd vote for Urias, but he's 15 years away from being out. He can vote. He just can't be the president. Yeah, right. Well, he's not from this country. But other than that... Are you saying

he shouldn't be able to pitch then? Are you saying they should build a wall? Build a wall to keep all the minor leaguers out. Yeah, I'm sure many veteran major leaguers would subscribe to a wall that would prevent minor league pitchers from being promoted to the majors. It sounds like a joke. Sounds like a thing that was said as a joke. All right.

So where can people find your podcast and how much political discussion will there be? There will be none. There will be none. And I'm actually nervous about my employers hearing this failed discussion. But yeah, you can find it at latimes.com slash sports. It's called the Los Angeles Times Baseball Podcast. The best way to find it, honestly, is to subscribe on iTunes. I think we're on iTunes. Yeah. And we'll have more episodes coming in the coming weeks.

It's myself and Pedro Mora, our angels writer. And we're going to talk about the Dodgers and the angels. And, you know, we'll insult each other. And Pedro will take what I say seriously because, you know, his sense of sarcasm is a little off. And it'll be good. You know, it'll be good. And you can follow both of us on Twitter.

You know, I'm at McCullough Times. I think Pete is at Pedro Mora, M-O-U-R-A. It'd be great if you listen. Can I, I have a, I have a suggested title for you. Okay. All right. Are you, are you at all a soul coughing fan? Not really.

Okay. Well, soul coughing has this, they've got some really great songs, but they've got one song that is just, you know, transcendently good. And so that's the inspiration. i think you should call it sports writers blues so that is a reference to the soul coughing song screenwriters blues and uh it has a lot of benefits to it one is blue is in the title right and i was i was trying to get blue in the title the other is that the song is really this almost sort of, I don't know, it's all about LA and it's also all about the voice on the radio in LA, but in a kind of a twisted sort of Mulholland

Drive kind of tone. And so it really, I think, captures everything you'd be looking for. And it's a great, great, great, great, great song. All right. Works for me. Check it out. Sounds great. And not copyrighted. So far as I can tell, Sportswriters Blues is all yours. I will take it up with Pedro and see what he says. All right.

Okay. Well, thank you, Andy, as always. Anytime, guys. Have a good one. All right. So that is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five Patreon supporters to single out are Kevin Smith, Grant Friday, Derek Wilson, John Marsh, and Adam VanderYacht. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team.

Pretty sure it's politics free. Go to our website, theonlyruleisithastowork.com, to find reviews and excerpts and interviews. And if you have finished the book, to explore the second screen experience, photos and videos and stats that we have uploaded to the site. If you feel like it, leave us a review on Amazon and or Goodreads. It helps us out. Tell a friend. Buy a copy for Father's Day. We appreciate the word of mouth.

You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. You can get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code BP. You can email us at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. That brings this week's podcasting to a close. We hope that you do have a wonderful weekend and we will talk to you again on Monday.

So we did that. Now I have just, I have so much regret in my heart right now.