Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 951: THE ONLY RULE Book Club Companion Podcast

Episode Date: September 9, 2016

Ben, Sam, and Sonoma Stompers GM Theo Fightmaster answer listener emails about the Stompers’ past two seasons and Ben/Sam’s book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work.

Can I get a, can I get a, running her hands through my fro, bouncing on 24s, why they say I'm ready? It's the remix to Ignition, hot and fresh out the kitchen, mama ruling that body, got every man in here wishing Sipping on coke and rum, I'm like so what I'm drunk, it's the freaking weekend,, I'm about to have me some fun It's the remix to Ignition, hot and fresh out the kitchen Mama rule in that body, got every man in here wishin' Sippin' on Coke and rum, I'm like so what, I'm drunk It's the freakin' weekend, baby, I'm about to have me some fun Good morning and welcome to episode 951 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hello. Hey. And we are joined by one of our favorite people in the world, the general manager of the Sonoma Stompers, Theo Fightmaster. Theo, hello. Hey, Ben. Hey, Sam. This is the long-awaited book club episode. I don't know if it's long-awaited. It was long advertised, at least.

Hopefully some of you have also been awaiting it. Theo's been waiting. I've been waiting. I'm very needy. So we've gotten a bunch of questions from listeners. We'll go through those. We'll make Theo talk a lot because Sam and I talk on every show. So I guess probably a lot of people are wondering about the name first and foremost. That's probably the most common question you get. So what do you know about the name? About my name? Your name.

Yeah, that's my favorite question, Ben. I mean, every person who I give a credit card or any form of payment to or make reservations with asks me this question. So this is, you'd think by now I'd have a well-versed response. Yeah. I'd have like seven of them, but I got it from my dad. It is Prussian. And apparently, as my father and grandfather told the story, our ancestors were, you know, fought in the Prussian army and were literally fight masters. And when they moved

to the United States, it was translated to English from schlagmeister. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What do you mean we're literally fight masters? They were warriors. Wait, so they were master fighters yeah they were not they they did not uh master over fights they were not running boxing i always think of this person as like a ring master a master over the ring and but you're saying that the master is an adjective here they just had mastery of fighting. Yeah, mastery, fight mastery. We shortened it.

It was just easier for, you know, checks and the analog world that they grew up in. Wait, is a ringmaster a thing? Yeah. Okay, good. Right? Yeah, no, believe it or not, Sam, you're the first person to bring this angle to this question. Yeah, but so ringmaster, yeah, of course Ringmaster's a thing. But I guess it's

more like, this would be more like a chess master. Look, I wasn't around in, you know, Renaissance Prussia or whenever they were doing their thing. I just have this really cool name that's, you know, it's worth all of these stupid questions,

but I don't have a good answer. It's just my name, Miller. Can you do some genealogical research and we'll call you back later once you know? I should, but I kind of like having it unknown because it bothers so many people that I don't have a specific lineage traced out as to you know where it came from i just it's it's a leave me alone guys i just want to know how you qualify as a fight master whether there's like a a mastery level exam that you have to take you have to kill

a certain number of people or dispatch someone in a certain way it It's just an online test now. I think Sam's taken it, I would speak. It's just a BuzzFeed quiz now. Are you a fight master? What's your favorite Lacroix color? So we're going to talk about baseball and the Stompers and your job, and congratulations on winning a Pacific Association title. Thank you. It was well-deserved.

Thank you. It feels well-deserved. Thank you. It feels better than it should. I would like to know your guys' ring sizes just for posterity mostly, but if I can get Eric to write the check, you guys definitely had a hand in what we did this year. It was a really rewarding second season. I was really kind of bummed out trying to go into it without you guys and

not having the same sort of support or energy around the team. And so it was nice that we were good this year also and kind of helped the hangover effect of last year. Yeah, well, we don't want to make this entirely about us because it wasn't mostly about us and we were not there and you were running A team on your own or You know with a few people helping out And we didn't have all that much to do with it but We did get a couple questions

About that so I will ask them Now question from Brandon and Question from Eric Brandon says In the book our heroes I guess that's us explain How they were able to work personal connections In order to acquire normally expensive products And databases and lists

That the stompers normally would not have been able to access What did Ben and Sam implement Or use in 2015 that you were able to Replicate or use again in 2016 For the products that stuck Did the year under your belt make this easier to use Did you have the staff person power To implement these as well as you wanted

Or did some utility have to fall by the wayside because of capacity? And Eric also wanted to know whether anything Sam and I did actually stuck around for season two. Yeah, I think the quick answer is no. But the real answer is, yeah, we I didn't want to regress. I knew that it would be really challenging with fewer resources, fewer bodies to do the things that you guys helped us do last year. very much a big part of what we did, even from signing contracts and just having an extra smart guy to help me organize paperwork as we're signing players and getting guys into town. And then he was our advanced scout. We basically had one advanced scout all season. He was in Pittsburgh and Vallejo and San Rafael when we were not. And he would give us really good, thorough scouting reports that we were able to use. John Chenier kept Grapevine up and going for us so that Tim could do things that don't

generate any revenue for the team during the day. So yeah, Grapevine was updated throughout the season. We used that as a way to look at splits quickly and, you know, kind of get a little bit more of a objective picture of what some of our guys were doing. Because as I know, another question mentioned kind of the personal nature, the relationships we have with these guys, because we do work so intimately with them. A lot of these guys have been on the team for three years now, and it's really easy to sort of have these biases against or for a guy often, like, you know, use an example, Mark Hurley didn't have a really good year this year, but he had such a great year last year. We kind of kept waiting for him to have a good year. And we started looking at the numbers and kind of the numbers said, well, you know, Mark's slumping

right now. And I think without that, we would have not, we would have kept him in the lineup every single day, regardless. And, you know, there was times where he had to kind of come off the bench um so we did try to look at things more neutrally is that a word i'm i'm like fried this is september and i haven't slept or like had a weekend since april but uh yeah you won a championship i'm just keep a lot out of you it a championship. I'm just keep taking a lot out of you. It does. It does. I'm going to keep walking or talking. Yeah. And the, uh, so there was no pitch effects this year and the program that Sam and I and our scouts used to chart games, bats was not around. And so Michael and anyone else who was scouting games was just coming up with workarounds. And I saw a spreadsheet where they were just literally writing down every pitch

and where it was and I guess what the result was. And there were just some kind of, you know, workarounds that they tried to use in the absence of this technology. There was still a radar gun and Chris Long updated his spreadsheet of college guys and sent that to Tim. I don't know whether you got anyone from it, but you did end up signing Taylor Thurber, who was one of my missed connections from 2015 from the spreadsheet. And he ended up signing with the Frontier League that year. But this year he did sign with the Snoppers and was really good. So that was nice.

Yeah, the spreadsheet was helpful again. Taylor was maybe one of the most valuable pitchers in the league. We kind of used him as sort of the fireman, or as Sam would say, the fireman initially. I would say that too. I say fireman. Okay, all right. And then I think he uses almost like two words, like fireman.

There's a pause in there. Taylor was great. He broke some club records, including one held by Eric Insals, which we can talk about later. And he was actually a really interesting, unique guy who pitched really well and probably would have been the guy that we tabbed with starting the championship game if there was one this season. That's how good he was for us. So it was exciting when we heard he was released.

Our bench coach, Chris Matthews, was with him in Schaumburg last year. And kind of that whole thing, he knew about the stompers from Ben's stalking of him last year. His dad's a pilot, which is, as Sam will like this, that's the greatest thing ever for an independent team to have a player whose dad's a pilot and he is, as Sam will like this, like that's the greatest thing ever for an independent team to have a player whose dad's a pilot and he can fly his son out here and then home at the end of the year. So Taylor was very good. I tried to get his dad to fly other guys in and out.

Didn't work. You probably tried to get his dad to fly banners over the stadium advertising, you know, Mary's Pizza Shack. That would have been a good one. But I don't know if American... The only indie league team with a charter service, their own Stompers Airlines. So many missed opportunities. So you mentioned that question, which came from Ken, and he said that advanced stats make us look at players

objectively and focus on production and so he wanted to know if or maybe i should say when you transition to a major league general manager job how you would be more ruthless in your decisions and less emotionally attached and that's something that I think all three of us struggled with to some extent last season. And it was partially wanting to avoid confrontation and partially not wanting to make anyone sad. And there were probably times where we kept someone we shouldn't have kept for that reason, or that at least played a part in our thinking. Do you think that you could give that up if you were to graduate to some higher level GM job? Well, despite, uh, despite Sam's tweet, the twins haven't called me yet. So, um, I'm going to update my LinkedIn profile and, you know, find a head Hunter. But, um, yeah, you know, that was actually one of the big takeaways from last year is that we just

didn't release guys who weren't very good. We kept waiting for them to get better, even though there wasn't real evidence of that. And this year, you know, a lot of it was from experience. A lot of it is kind of getting more used to destroying dreams and crushing souls.

You know, you remember what spring training was like last year, where there was some meetings where there's not a person in the room who's not trying to fight back tears. It's really personal when you're telling somebody that the thing that they've wanted to do their entire life, they can't do it anymore, or at least they can't do it right now. So I do think I've become a little bit calloused. This was my first spring training, my first season where like, I didn't have one of those meetings where there's guys in tears and I'm keeping my stuff together. And I think it was just, you know, that was, I think I credit Yoshi with that. I credit Chris Matthews with that, you know, who are guys who've got way more experience in professional baseball, who have been on that side of the conversation as players themselves and just understand that's part of the cycle. So we did that and we kept upgrading our team. If a guy wasn't doing well, we would try to find a guy to be better. So, yeah, I mean, I guess the short answer is, yeah,

I learned to be a little bit more objective, a little bit more neutral. I did bring back a couple of players who I had questions about. You know, I referenced Gonzo earlier. I didn't know what Gonzo had left. He had a pretty bad year for us last year. He was not engaged physically or emotionally in baseball. Went to Columbia and figured something out. Broke his collarbone in the spring.

And Sam, you know, we talked about kind of me dodging a bullet because I wouldn't have to bring back Gonzo or have that conversation. Edit that out. Jeez. None of these guys listen to the podcast. Don't take yourself so seriously. Half of them haven't even read the book. Gonzo owns the book, and I don't know if a single page has been creased long enough for him to have read it.

That was another question we got from Doug who wanted to know how many stompers read the book and what they said about it. Well, I actually, I want to ask you because we taught, I went up there for a very early game. Was it your home opener? The second game of the second home home, I think home opener.

Yeah. Opener. Yeah. And, uh, I, uh, we heard,

uh, one of the players told us that, uh, the new guys, uh, hated the book that They hadn't read it but they hated the book and made fun of it without having read it.

Did you have any I'm more curious not from if Gonzo read it or if the guys who returned read it but what was it like for the guys who were not here last year to join this team that

was like selling a book about the previous year's team? Was there any kind of resentment that like the, you know, like a feeling like the ex-girlfriend was, you know, like you were saving all of your ex-girlfriend's love letters or something like that? No, I actually think, you know, a couple of the guys that, new guys who were really excited by it. I know Martin Cronin, who was with our team for most of the year, we, we drafted him out of the league tryout back in April. He knew about the Stompers from last summer and he read the book and he enjoyed the book. It seemed to be, and granted, these guys tell me completely different things than they tell their teammates because I'm the general manager. So while I have, I think, a pretty good, pretty honest relationship with a lot of them,

I'm still their boss and they maybe don't fully disclose everything that they would disclose to their teammates or their friends. But I didn't get that at all. I actually saw more sort of resentment about the book from guys who were here last year, guys who felt like it was a distraction last year. Well, if you think that's a distraction, we're going to put girls on your team and then we'll see how distracted you guys are. But no, I think it was just kind of, they felt like they were coming to a more bona fide team they were maybe they're playing in the pacific association but they're playing for this team that their uncle read a book excerpt from in the new york times like it was a little bit more of a

glamorous place to be in the unglamorous world of low-level professional baseball did any player uh that that you found out about have an issue with anything you were quoted as saying about them or about their teammates? Because, you know, we quoted all of us, you know, having pretty frank conversations about some of the players, either as members of the team or as players on the field. Well, the closest I've got is our owner, Eric Galata, didn't like how Ben quoted him at his team party in spring training. And then he said, well, how did he get that speech like completely word for word? Like I remember saying all of that i was like

because he had a recorder out it was on the table that you were sitting at well i didn't i didn't agree to that and we we kind of did like we knew eric that they were writing a book about us like if you anyway um mark hurley was reading the book and he was pretty early on when he got to the will price chapter and he came up to me after reading that and he was like that was hilarious what you told will and that was the last thing i heard about him so uh i don't know if he got to the point where ben wanted to release him uh or if he just maybe he dropped the book and his bookmark fell out and he picked up like a chapter later and never knows that we didn't release him. Well, if he did, hopefully he gets to the part later where Ben uses that as an example of our limitations and how he almost made a terrible mistake for the team.

Right. And thank goodness Faye wouldn't let him. Thank goodness for Faye. I mean, that's kind of the afterword of the book really yeah and joshua asked if we told the players and if we told theo that we were writing a book i just thought you guys liked us i thought you were i thought we were paying you yeah and uh he asked if anyone asked not to be a part of it or if anyone objected at any point. And in my experience, no, right? I think everyone basically forgot that it was happening or maybe never believed that it was happening. read like i think that the if you ask most people in the league probably thought when we said writing a book we were going to self-publish some ebook on amazon that nobody would read like they they

thought we were you know probably delusional about well sam has a good anecdote to that point from uh the tryouts when you ran into your buddy matt cavanaugh yeah i saw i saw uh i went to the tryout and it was um just before the book came, like a week before the book was going to come out or three days, I think before the book was going to come out. It was the weekend your op-ed in the times ran. Yeah. So correct. You can correct it. I might have this anecdote a little wrong, Theo, but, uh, yeah, Kavanaugh says, uh, so, uh, so how's, how's that, how's that book thing that you guys were going to do coming? I said, oh, it's good.

It comes out in three days. And he goes, you wrote it? This is the Pacific's manager. Yeah. And hero of the book, really, in many ways. Right. So, yeah, it just wasn't an issue. Everyone knew.

We explained why we were there. But we certainly told Theo that we were writing a book. Yeah, I told everybody. I used it as, whether it was wise or not, I used it as kind of a sales pitch to say, hey, people might remember this team in this season for a reason they don't normally remember a lot of teams. I mean, there's a lot of major league teams that don't get books written about them in a season. So nobody seemed to object. really in terms of the players off field behavior, I don't think anybody really modified their, their fun to sort of,

you know, worried about how their girlfriend one day might read the book or their future wife. Not that there was anything like scandalous or juicy in there, which was disappointing to me just because that would have been humorous. But yeah, yeah, obviously everybody knew everybody was on board and it wasn't a real big

secret. No, it wasn't at all a secret. It was, yeah. Anyway, my wife, when she found out that you guys had won the championship this year, she said, oh, you know, that's great. What did they do that was better than what you guys did? Like what, how come they were better this year? that was better than what you guys did. Like, how come they were better this year? And one of the things that I think is easy to identify is that while we were terrified of the Pecos League because we didn't know how to put any of the numbers into context, because we knew that they had, you know,

ballparks where it was 290 to dead center and the pitching was horrible, and you'd see, like, you'd have batters who were batting, you know, 480, you know, fairly regularly. I mean, this is a league where teams would, some teams would give up 10 or 11 runs a game on average, their pitching staffs would. So we stayed away from it. I think if we stuck around for another year, we probably would have tried to crack that code. But we basically fought any effort to even bring in anybody from the Pecos League. And the Pacifics did not do that. They

got a bunch of really good players from the Pacific League, not the Pacific, the Pecos League. And you this year went into the Pecos League and got a bunch of players. And I'm curious, A, whether there was any process to how you identified which ones you wanted, what it took to convince you, and B, what the results were, how that worked out for you. Well, it worked out really well. I think we added a couple bullpen arms down the stretch. Ryan Richardson and Adam Ogburn were both in the bullpen for the Alpine Cowboys, Richardson and Adam Ogburn, who were both in the bullpen for the Alpine Cowboys.

And they basically came in and turned us into what everyone wanted the Yankees to be this year. I mean, we had kind of a three-headed monster in the bullpen with Ogburn and Richardson and Jose Flores, who was another guy that, you know, by way of Ben and Sam found his way to Sonoma. His agent was the same agent as Paul Hosdovic from last year. And when Flores got released from the Brewers, I think they called Sam and Sam gave him my number and we signed Jose. So I didn't do anything this year. You guys did everything again. But yeah, we just, again, we looked for references. We looked at numbers and then we would talk to guys, you know, D. Fox, Derek Fox fox who was here this year who'd been in the pecos league pretty much his whole career and had pitched

or and had played an alpine a lot you know knew these guys pretty well so i think we trusted well this is really really risky i mean you saw this last year trusting player recommendations whether it's you know a guy like rhymes with Schmatt Schmocker or whatever. You don't want to trust these guys, but I think there are certain players that are objective enough that they can say, hey, this teammate in this place I played is a good ball player. And we took a flyer on a kid who had just absurd numbers in Caleb Bryson. And for the first month of the year, he had absurd numbers up here. They started throwing him more breaking balls and he found his way out of the lineup, probably more because we didn't have a position for him. And we brought

Joel Carranza back and Joel was going to DH every day, no matter who else was an option, really. Derek Fox was another guy who we signed in 2014, was here for about two weeks. When I went back and looked at the numbers, he had just terrible BABIP. I mean, I think he just hit into a lot of bad luck. He hit a home run in two weeks, which is not a real power guy. He was still drawing a lot of walks. He was getting on base. He was playing decent defense, but he just was hitting into some bad luck. So he went down and was the Pecos League MVP in 2015, hit whatever, 450 or something. So we said, hey, let's try this guy again. He's a good kid. He's a character guy. I know his host family would be excited to have him

back. And I think we just took more chances, to be honest. I think we were, I was okay with being wrong because waiting for that perfect opportunity to unfold itself just doesn't happen in life. So make a decision, right or wrong, just make a decision. Action feels good. Action does feel good. So I want to go back to Caleb because, and I'll preface this by saying, I think it is undeniably like one of the biggest mistakes that Ben and I made was ignoring the Pecos League and feeling like we, you know, that instead of trying to to to dissect the Pecos League, we just put it off to the side and it cost us big time. But as far as Caleb goes, he was he was the second best hitter in the Pacific Association, or sorry, at least

second best hitter on the Sonoma Stompers last year by OPS. And he was, you know, one of the best hitters. Let's see. In fact, I can probably get that real quick. He was among regulars. He was like the sixth best hitter in the whole league. He was a great success story, and you're right. He had crazy numbers in the Pecos League the year before. He hit.356,.447,.822, which is a.1269 OPS. On his very same team, though, there were better hitters than him. There was a guy named Shane Casey, who in the same number of played appearances had a 1318

OPS. And there was a guy named Eric Williams, who in the same number of played appearances had a 1318 OPS. And then there was another guy right below him at 1118. And so, so when I'm curious, why Caleb? Like, why not Shane or Eric? Why did you, when you saw Caleb come over and hit so well, did you go, oh, well, let's see, you know, how the guys who were better than him do? Did you reach out to them? Or was this simply a matter of going back to the sort of old model of whoever calls us up, we'll look at? Like, was Caleb just conveniently lying around for you? And to some degree, you kind of lucked into him.

Well, I told you this about Caleb, I think, when you came up in spring training for your book reading at Copperfields in Petaluma, that he was the guy whose dad emailed us last August. And, you know, that was like the, the biggest red flag I've seen is when a guy's dad is emailing you because guys, dads are less objective than their agents are. When the off season came around and I did a little bit more looking at his numbers and I saw that he had some success in the Cape Cod league. I saw that, you know, his collegiate numbers were, were also impressive. I called his manager

and asked for a recommendation in Trinidad, and his manager spoke incredibly highly of him as a guy and as a player. And actually, I talked to him about Eric Williams in that same phone call, and Eric didn't want to come here. We tried probably through half our season to get Eric here as we were trying to stabilize our own outfield. We didn't start the year with Matt Hibbert. We had a couple guys that we were rotating in and out in right field. Neither of them made it to August with us. So we were actually trying to get Eric Williams basically, again, based on his numbers and based on the fact that we were willing to take a flyer on these Pecos League guys because they are happy to be here when a guy gets here from

the Frontier League or the American Association they're like where are the showers when a guy gets here from the Pecos League they think that they've just been promoted to the big league so the mindset and the appreciation is different too. Eric Williams, I think, was going to retire after the All-Star break in the Pecos League. He felt like if he was hitting damn near 500 and no one was giving him a chance, besides the Sonoma Stompers, that he did not really have much of a career and was going to go start his adult life. And Aaron asked about the churn in independent leagues and whether 2015 and all the players we lost in the second half was typical. And it seemed like you maybe didn't

lose quite as many players this year, but maybe you were just better about replacing them than we were the year before. I think last year was a little bit of an outlier in terms of the number of guys that went. And I think that last year taught us a lot that we weren't going to be in that situation where we're caught on our heels. And if somebody does go, we don't have anybody in mind to replace him with. So we did a lot more of letting guys throw a bullpen if they were in town or if they emailed us or if they called us or they had a good reference. We would take a look at them and kind of keep them on our radar. We just kept better tabs on more players so that when spots either opened up by players going up, we could make a move that was more of a lateral move than a move out of desperation we would do that and if we thought we had a chance to improve the

team we did that i mean how many moves did we make last year that made our team better i don't know if we made one move in season that I might be missing something off. Well, I guess we added – Dylan and Santos. Yeah, we added those guys. And they were basically retired free agents. So that was you guys. Good job, you guys.

But other than that, other than the two guys who are now playing affiliated baseball. I guess the – Mike, i guess if i was gonna the question that i was getting at was that like we i i think we really tried to get past the uh the pool of of players who were contacting us as a means of acquiring players like we wanted to expand the universe and i was curious if if you continued to kind of expand the universe of potential players uh rather than just sort of checking your inbox and asking who knew somebody. Yeah, I think we did.

We actually. All right, there you go. Yeah. Okay. I'll just stop there. Period. So we covered a couple things Sam and I did that hopefully were useful during our time there.

But a couple of people asked about ways we were bad or they uh they asked aaron asked what was your biggest disappointment compared to your expectations of what we might bring and then uh jody asked also how much additional work we made for you and uh whether our presence meant longer hours for you you know um my biggest disappointment was you guys showed up in spring training. Like I thought you guys would be here sort of earlier in the year and see a little bit more of what goes into ramping up an organization of this size into, you know, trying to do what we do at the ballpark every night. to trying to do what we do at the ballpark every night.

And maybe that was just me thinking that was interesting because I think it's interesting. That's why I choose to do it every day of my life. But I don't think, and then you were corduroys in the dugout, which is just, I don't know if there's a max fine big enough for that. But I don't think you guys, outside of Ben, like at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when I'm trying to get to the ballpark, would text me and say, hey, can you make photocopies of this questionnaire, of these surveys, to see how dialed in guys are? And it's like, yeah, I have like 15 minutes and all sorts of printer ink I can just waste on your surveys, Ben. No problem.

No, but I thought you guys were very self-sufficient. If I had to schedule advanced scouts and if I had to, you guys I thought were pretty, I don't know, you guys insulated me from too much extra work and anything that you guys needed I would have been happy to do because of what you were doing for the Stompers. I mean, you know, you guys raised our profile. You made it a whole lot more fun and interesting to, you know, I think about what if I was in Vallejo or Pittsburgh?

Like, what if that was my job? You know, granted, they wouldn't hire me. you know granted i wouldn't they wouldn't hire me um but to have you guys there was added a texture to the season that i was really happy to have and you know it was going into this season i was gonna i was kind of missing you guys didn't know how it was gonna it felt sort of lonely and empty without uh you guys telling me what to do how do you uh it you know i i went to a a Pacific's game before I ever went to a Stompers game and met you. And, you know, who knows, maybe but for a quirk of fate, we could have been working for them. How do you think you would have thought about us if we had been doing this with the Pacifics? Would you have thought that it was, you know, gimmicky and bush league?

Would you have thought it was unfair? Would you have thought it was unfair? Would you have thought it was too try hard? Would you have hated Sabermetrics and mocked them and called us a big league? I want to ask the question of like, what would you guys have felt working for San Rafael? Like how would have been working with Matt Kavanaugh and Mike Shapiro? Well, I mean, everybody's pretty tribal. So probably we all would have loved each other and been best friends okay so this was just pure fate that you guys like me probably

okay um no i think i think there would have been an element of sour grapes for sure i mean i'm i'm human this team that you know for those who don't know like i started in santa fe and and any sort of success that they get to enjoy that i don't get, like I started in San Rafael and any sort of success that they get to enjoy that I don't get to enjoy now that I'm not there, I feel not resentful, but like, hey, I kind of helped them get there. Like I should be reaping some rewards. So I would have probably been a little bit bitter. I think I would have been excited about the project. I don't know if I would have read the book. It might've been, especially if they won, I don't think I would have read the book. let's say you guys go and do everything and the results are exactly the same

like we lose and uh just devastating fashion i don't think i could stomach reading that chapter again knowing that uh you guys were with the bad guys but i think you know objectively i would have said yeah go for it you have to do that sort of stuff i would have hoped that I would have said, yeah, go for it. You have to do that sort of stuff. I would have hoped that they would have done it as earnestly as I think we tried to do it. Whatever I mean by that, I'm not even sure. Just with some level of integrity, some level of, as they like to say over there, respect the game. Maybe they would have had you in baseball uniforms in the dugout instead of corduroys, and it would have been totally different. We discussed that at some point, remember or before the season i think we talked

about whether we should do that and we all agreed that we would just look ridiculous i guess we looked ridiculous anyway but in a different way at least people saw you coming though Yeah. Doug asked how we all decided that Theo should be the one to sign his name on all the motivational letters we gave to the players at the end of the season. Who brought that idea up? Why did we end up doing it? And we all wrote those, the three of us and Tim, and then Theo signed them. So how did we decide to do that? And then Theo signed them. So how did we decide to do that? I thought it was my idea. And I asked you guys to find me some data that would support that, hey, you know, despite all of these kind of name players leaving, we're still a really good team capable of putting up numbers and winning games.

Can you guys help me kind of divide and conquer? And it was a little bit, you know, it was very gimmicky. It was like, hey, the boss cares about you. The boss wants is in your corner and believes in you. And I thought the letters should come from me because I was, you guys to a, for some segment of the clubhouse were a little bit polarizing. And I don't think I ever was there. I think I was sort of steadfastly a stomper, regardless of being in management or not. That's my recollection of it. Maybe it was Sam's idea and I just remembered it being his mind. No, that's, you're right.

It was your idea. I always wondered whether it really was that you wanted to write a letter to one person. And it's then once you had that idea you thought hey i could do this for everybody but i don't know if that was the origin or not but yeah it was your idea it was great idea totally worked i think we won at least one game after that letter yeah plus that was like that was like 2100 words of our book that we didn't have to write anymore you guys had to write like 1100 of them you wrote about half yeah yeah but but when we there would be times where you'd be writing i mean we wrote that so fast that you could not get any

writer's block at all and there'd be times where you'd sort of start to stall in an afternoon and then you go wait i can block quote here anything that you could block quote would get you going again tim and i were joking that this podcast is happening now just so you guys can block quote the whole like afterwards for the paperback edition yeah so ken asked how often we went back and forth in thinking i'm glad there will be a book where we get to document this and i wish there weren't a book where we'll have to document this. And to use a poker analogy, did it feel like playing hands we knew would be televised later? So I guess we can all answer that. Maybe we have different answers. But there were definitely times, especially early in the season, when Sam and I wondered whether we were screwing things up.

And we even discussed whether we should ask our editor to postpone the whole project and just do 2015 as a trial run and then come back and write the book for 2016. You should have. Would have been a different book. Very different. I don't know whether it would have been better or worse. But that's something that we thought about just because we were worried that it was running off the rails. that we thought about just because we were worried that it was running off the rails. But were there times where you thought that, Theo, or you wondered whether this was just a disaster and why did I ever agree to this? No.

The only kind of anecdote that pops into my mind is the day we traded Faye to Bridgeport. Sam and I, Sam, thank you, by the way, I was going to let it linger for like two more days because I didn't want to deal with it. I didn't want the confrontation. I didn't want the blow up. I didn't want the, you know, what was it? Three weeks of crazy text messages that followed our trade of Faye. Ben got probably the worst of that. But Sam basically encouraged me to just pull the trigger and get him out of here Sunday afternoon, the day that we clinched the first half. And we're walking back to the office because Sam's going to be in the meeting so he can record it and write a book about it. And I was saying, I'm just going to lie to him. I'm going

to tell him that we need to lower payroll. It's a business decision, and he's our most valuable asset. And Sam was good with it for like three steps. And then he's like, wait, you can't lie to him. There's going to be a book. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to just go with it. I don't know. I don't care if he reads it and he finds out I'm a liar. He's not going to like me anyway. It's the easiest way for me to do this really difficult thing, you know, professionally speaking. So I just told him we had to go another direction and we traded him to Bridgeport and kept it really very much like, you know, the line from Moneyball where, you know, talk to the traveling secretary, they'll have the details for you sort of thing.

Like didn't get into the details, didn't get into the minutiae of why it wasn't working out anymore. We just found the easiest way to tell him he was leaving and told him he was leaving. So Jack wanted to ask about some of the sausage making of the book. We won't get too deeply into that. We have talked about it in other interviews and how we went about it. And basically, we didn't start the book till the season was over we kind of were thinking about it all the time and you guys had such great intentions of writing as the season went on remember that we were gonna journal yeah oh we were gonna come back from the ballpark every day and write down everything that happened and it's part of it we part of how we sold it to the publisher is by yeah saying we could do a quick turnaround because we're going to have it mostly written by the end of the season. Right. And there was just no time. We were exhausted. You were

driving back and forth. I was writing for Grantland. It was, there was too much going on and the team was taking up too much of our time. Yeah. And so we were recording lots of things and writing notes a little bit at least. And I was surprised by just how much I remembered at the end of the year, just from some basic notes. And it was good that we had to write right after the season, because if we had had to wait or if we'd been able to wait, we probably would have forgotten a lot of things, but we didn't have time to forget anything.

But Jack wants to know how conscious we were of things that would make good fodder for the book as they were happening. And how many times did we think we had the narrative arc pegged before it changed abruptly again? So that's a question for us. Yeah, that sounds like you guys. Go ahead, Theo. My narrative arc never changed. It was true all season long.

Well, to the first question, you just, I don't know, you just always know. Like when you hear a sentence that would make a good quote, you can always tell if you've been doing it for a while. And same with anecdotes. And, you know, there might be, like, we would be keeping score at, you know, the games we were scouting. at, you know, the games we were scouting, and there'd just be little notes, like one sentence, one word annotations in the scorecard or whatever, just as a reminder to, you know, in three months, circle back and write that thing about, you know, that thing that you just saw. As for the narrative arc, I'm not sure. I had a, I, one of my friends tried to to convince me when we were 6-0, I guess we were 6-1. It was right after our first loss. He tried to convince me that the book should end there was a developed narrative arc to it that would have you know been enough that there was already enough twists and turns uh in the season that we could

have ended the book right there uh but i don't know i'm not sure i don't know how to i don't really know how to answer that i mean i don't know ben i don't know we should i think it i mean it changed i think at least a few times because we started out so great. We were winning every game. At that point, the book could have just been, I don't know, we're brilliant, we're geniuses. Or maybe we didn't even do that much and we're winning all the time. I don't know. It would have been one of those things.

And then, of course, we started losing and we started losing a lot of players. And there was the grind that set in and all these things. And then of course we started losing and we started losing a lot of players and there was the grind that set in and all of these things. And, you know, the second half didn't go nearly as well as the first half. So that changed everything. I mean, if we had just coasted to the title, the book would have been very different. If we had been bad from day one, the book would have been very different. So I think it was changing all the time. And then, of course, there was the confrontations with Phelan and the ultimate reconciliation with Yoshi. And that was changing things all the time because, you know, if we had never figured that out and never got along with the manager, that would have been a different book than it was ultimately, where we did have that breakthrough and we got to do the things we wanted to do.

So I think it changed all the time, and that was one of the reasons, in addition to the lack of time, that it was just hard to start. We could have described scenes as they happened, but we couldn't have really fit them into the larger arc because we had no idea what the arc was going to be until the last pitch really of the season so i think it was it would have been tough i don't even know if there was a narrative

arc there's a there's a chronology i mean the arc is like we find out if we win or lose at the end of all this and on the way there it's just a chronology i mean there were bullet points that we isolate you know that i we identified as things to build a chapter around. But I don't know that I ever really consciously thought, oh, well, where are we on the hero's journey or anything like that. Yeah. I was actually going to ask you, and maybe we've mentioned it, maybe we've talked about it. Did you guys have any strong opinions about what was a better result for you guys and the book? Like winning that championship game or losing?

Did one of those outcomes make the book or the story, in your estimation, a better story? Or would have made it a better story? Well, I think that there are sort of extreme ways that the season could have gone that might have been interesting for their own reasons. I think, for instance, if we really had gone undefeated in the second half like that. We were close. We were really, really close. You know, there would have 70 and the whole team, like half the team quit, like which a lot of people were expecting that when we started,

like they'd go a great thing about this project is that no matter how bad it goes, like the worse it goes, the better it is for you. And we ended up with a sort of season in the middle. And with within, you know, if you have a season in the middle, I think that the way that it played out was really good for the story. And, and I don't, I don't think that the last game mattered. I think that I would have rather, I think that I would have rather written about a season where we win the, in the final weekend and have home field advantage in the last game. I am disappointed that the setting for that last game is not Sonoma, is not Arnold Field. But I don't know. I think it is fine. You work with what you got.

It never really seemed – I don't know. It never really felt all that important whether we were winning or losing for the book. I mean, look, I've told a couple people this, but the secret, the dirty secret about this book from my perspective is that the whole thing about running a team and employing sabermetric ideas and all that, that's the framing device to sell the book to a publisher.

That's the elevator pitch. But really, I think Ben and I just wanted to write about a baseball team. And this was the way that we could convince somebody to pay us to do that. And I really just wanted to write one of those classic, basic type things where you write about a season in a baseball team. So as far as that goes, it didn't really matter whether any of it worked. Really? Yeah, I wanted it to work because I was worried. I didn't want it to just be documenting a season with a team.

I was worried that if it turned into that, then a lot of people really wouldn't be interested because, you know, there are thousands of baseball teams playing every season and they all have interesting people and stories and anecdotes. And, you know, if there's a low level independent league team, a lot of people are going to say, who are these guys? Why should I care? And, you know, I didn't want it to be purely just a little slice of life story about a small town on a small team and, you know, players chasing their dreams and all of that. I wanted that to be a big part of the book, definitely. But I didn't think that could be the whole book and have an audience really and, you know, stick in people's minds as much. So I was worried about it turning into that all season. And that's why I did kind of keep pushing the we have to do things that we said we were going to do angle just because, you know, even if they didn't work, even if we didn't get to do all of them, we needed something, I thought, to make it stand out from just the diary of a season sort of model.

I hope it did. I hope it was a good mix in the end because if we had turned it into the real laboratory and science experiment and we'd done all of that stuff, there were a lot of times during the beginning of the season where I just thought, oh, we have to make them stop bunting because we're a sabermetric team and it's embarrassing if we're the sabermetric team and they keep doing dumb bunts and, you know, you didn't care at all about that because you didn't think it was interesting. Like if we made them stop bunting, who cares? That's not an interesting chapter for the book or anything. And that is true, too. So I think if we'd been able to do all those things, it might have been more boring in some ways because, you know, either they would have worked or they wouldn't have. And that's about it. If we'd just gotten to do everything we wanted to do from day one, then there's no conflict. And it's just kind of a dud, I think. So anyway, I hope it ended up with the right mix of math and science and also humor and character. All right. We are close to finished here. Just a couple more. John asked whether there were any female players at the tryouts when we were there. There were not. And did we think about bringing a female player on board? The Stompers had success in 2016 with a few female players, but wondered if that was in your considerations for 2015.

but wondered if that was in your considerations for 2015. And it was something that we talked about, and we spoke to a woman who has played at a high level before, and we were interested in having her come play for us. But I think she had some other things going on in her life, and we were just so overwhelmed with what we were doing and trying to find players anywhere that it was just one of those things we didn't get to, one of the many things that we didn't do.

And, of course, Theo, you did it. So give us a summary of how that went. Well, yeah, I mean, it's not a totally unique idea. I mean, there's been women who've played professional baseball. You know, Isla Borders played for probably four seasons in the American Association. And Iri Yoshida pitched for a team in this league when, you know, Chico and Maui were around. We talked about it, I think, last year with you guys about maybe, you know, it's a point of differentiation. It's a little bit of marketing.

It's a little bit of a fun wrinkle. differentiation it's a little bit of marketing it's a little bit of a a fun wrinkle you know what made it happen this year was this guy called francis ford coppola um i guess that's his name calls us up one day and was like hey there should be girls on the team and we went to lunch and we listened to him and jack went and ordered the the rack of lamb which is like the most expensive thing on the menu at francis's restaurant which is a real power move. I had the hamburger and, you know, we told him it'd be really difficult. It was going to be, for a number of reasons, it was going to be challenging. And he said, yeah, I don't care. Try it. So we tried it. And, you know, I think we had mixed results. I think we found two young women who are remarkable people. You know, Kelsey Whitmore and Stacey Piagno are both way, way, way, way, way above average when it comes to baseball.

You know, and they still have some growth and they need to get better as baseball players to be more consistent against this type of competition, which they've never faced before in their lives. I mean, Kelsey was literally playing high school baseball last year and outside of, or this year, I mean, this May, she was playing high school baseball. And outside of, you know, a few guys like Bryce Harper, not many people can jump from high school to this level of baseball. Not that this is the big leagues, but people don't realize how good some of these players are. Saying that, her approach to the game was advanced. She really did have a good approach at the plate. She had an incredible work ethic. And then Stacey, you know, Stacey had better stuff than guys on our team

in terms of you look at her season numbers. There was guys who pitched for us this year who weren't as good as she was, uh, in some respects. And she throws harder than some guys who pitched for us last year, at least a guy. And, uh, you know, it was a really fun sort of cultural thing to be a part of. It was fun to, you know, we were at Lagunitas for a team party and Stacy gets on the piano or Kelsey's on the piano and Mike Jackson starts singing John Legend. It was just the type of thing that wouldn't have happened from a clubhouse culture standpoint if it was just a bunch of dudes. So that was a really rewarding, cool thing to be a part of, just even regardless of the box scores.

And we're going to see what we can do. We had a mid-season tryout this year, and a couple of women registered and came out. And we didn't sign them out of the tryout. But I think the simple fact that more women are thinking about baseball or even young girls, or more importantly, even, you know, there'd be like a five-year-old kid who'd come up to Kelsey and they'd want her autograph, not because she was a girl, but because she was a baseball player. And like, it didn't even register to this kid who's like in his very formative years that this is a girl baseball player. And in the world of girl

baseball players, maybe the most famous girl baseball player right now. So I think that stuff is kind of the big picture stuff is what was exciting to be a part of. And it's one of the things that we are proud to do and kind of need to do as a small team that's always looking for new eyeballs. All right, and last question, and I'm going to ask this just in case it's a prelude to an actual offer.

Question from James. If the Stompers were to receive a large sum of money, what would be the first thing that you would use that money for? Define large. Well, he said that we could make up a number that would make for a good question. Five million dollars. Oh, yeah. No, that's good. Well, I'm getting a raise.

And we're going to pay off debt. We're going to pay off a lot of debt. We're going to $5 million. I'm going to redesign some T-shirts, maybe get some championship gear, pay for rings. I would love, to me, the longevity of the Stompers is so contingent on not just our own success, but the league. Like if there's no one to play, there's no Stompers. And, you know, if we were infused

with some sort of cash or something like that, I would look at a way to stabilize this league, maybe add a couple of teams, find some good operators, and just sort of grow the entire league because that's what the Stompers are probably the most reliant on. I feel pretty comfortable that we can make this work if we have teams to play. Sonoma, even though it's a tiny population and we're not necessarily a profitable venture, we're getting closer and closer to break even. And our third year actually might be even cash flow break even. But, you know, we only are as good as our weakest partner.

And right now there's two teams in this league that you kind of wonder how long are they going to stick it out for. So $5 million would go a long way. I appreciate the generosity. And you can make the check out to Stompers Baseball LLC. So you would use that $5 million basically to shore up the league. That's interesting. Like you would not use it for. Well, some of it, yeah.

Yeah. Interesting. I mean, what's left over? Yeah. I think that you might be one of the people in the world who is most qualified to answer the question of what it will be like for the Mets to employ Tim Tebow. And I bring that up for a couple of reasons. One is that as an indie league GM, you've hired people who are very famous more than they're very good at baseball,

although with some success on the field as well. But you know, people who are clearly distractions and who are there for financial reasons. And, you know, we don't know for a fact that that's what the Tebow thing is. But, you know, whatever, we'll see. But, but also, I'm curious, because I'm going to tell a little story. I don't think I've told this story about Jerome. Jerome Godsey was a 36-year-old pitcher on our team last year, 2015. And he was a local guy who had been involved in local baseball going back to junior college. He was the all-time saves leader at Santa Rosa Community College where I believe you went, Theo.

It's not a community. It's a junior college. Oh, okay. It was a junior college. Oh, sorry. Okay. And so Jerome, he was a local guy, but he had an extremely touching story about how he ended up being on the Stompers. And I guess I can tell it or you can tell it. It's up to you. You tell it. Why don't you tell it? You're the storyteller. tell it or you can tell it it's up to you you tell it why don't you tell you tell you're the storyteller all right so as recounted by theo to me uh jerome was um a d1 college player uh who

didn't get drafted and uh this was before indie ball was a a real big thing and so his career just sort of ended uh at that point and you know 10 years pass uh and shortly before the season the Stompers 2015 season Jerome's father suddenly passed away unexpectedly and so as Theo recounted it uh at the time one of the things that made Jerome want to play again after so many years of being away from it uh was that this was a chance for him to sort of honor his father by pursuing this, you know, the baseball dream, the professional baseball dream. And I felt like Jerome deserved his roster spot. I thought he was a good pitcher as well. And I liked having him around.

But certainly he also had this really compelling story for why he wanted to be there. And a lot of the guys on the team didn't really like Jerome personally because he talked a lot. But also there was a resentment of him because he was old. He didn't have a future in the game. He was not like them, sort of grinding it out to try to move up a level. He was just there taking up a roster spot so that he could, you know, play ball as a hobby in some sense. And there was a, I think there was a lot of resentment toward him for that by some players and maybe toward you, Theo, for giving a roster spot away like that. And so I'm curious if you would expect there to be any backlash to the Mets front office by the Mets prospects, by Mets minor leaguers, who would be doing that

same sort of math and going, well, hey, this is a guy who is taking up a roster spot. He is costing some kid who's just like me a chance at their dream so that he can indulge in his fame-driven fantasy. Would you expect that to be an issue at all? Yeah, I would. I mean, you know, minor league players at all levels have very little leverage. And I'm sure that's like, you know, another book that could be written. But yeah, I think that's a big part of it. And that was something with Jerome that maybe if I didn't have this, the personal relationship I did have with him, it didn't have, you know, kind of the storybook element element to it he would have a harder time making the team but you know he he played with fey uh he was pretty good i mean he got outs he knew how to

pitch and independent baseball is about getting outs and wins and getting people to come and watch you play um but i think yeah i think tebow he's made his money right i mean he's not gonna he's gonna make more money being tim tebow than he's going to make playing minor league baseball. There's going to be a fair amount of resentment. But these guys are all, his teammates aren't going to, they're not going to give up their spot on their roster and give up their dream because they have a guy who they used to share a locker room with who's not there because Tebow's there now. used to share a locker room with who's not there because Tebow's there now. I mean, I don't, it would be something that we care about for 10 minutes. Maybe we'll care about it again in spring training if he's, you know, if he's still around and it's just something for Skip Bayless to talk about. I don't know. It's Tim Tebow. I can't believe we're still talking about Tim Tebow in the year 2016. Yeah. Yeah. I actually saw a thread. One of the stompers I'm friends with on Facebook posted something earlier today about

Tim Tebow and his status has a frowny face and his mood is feeling annoyed he goes on for a while about how you know he let's sign another football player to play baseball it's frustrating

when guys are out here living in their cars living off ramen noodles just to get a chance to possibly play somewhere. And this guy comes along and because he's a big name, he gets a shot and expresses the idea that there are better people out there who are not getting the shot. There sure are. I mean, and that's, you know, we picked up a guy midseason this year named Chaz Meadows, who turned out to be a huge pickup for us. And, you know, we picked up a guy mid-season this year named Chaz Meadows, who turned out to be a huge pickup for us. And, you know, I talked to Chaz. He had a scholarship to go to Long Beach State. He played there a year, went to a smaller school, and he was just kind of soured on baseball. And he was telling me how political it was. And my response to Chaz was, you're giving us way too much credit. Like, this is random.

It's not political. The reason we signed you is because we happen to be in Pittsburgh today. You were taking ground balls for Aaron Miles, and he didn't want a shortstop. And we had three infielders who couldn't catch the ball for the last two weeks. Like, it's just pure, I don't know, random luck that we were here today. You were here today. We needed you, and we signed you. It's not like we have this big agenda to screw over all these deserving guys. And while I think we tried to

travel parallel paths with doing what was most right for our organization and what was right for all the players individually, you can't always do that. And certain people get the benefit of whatever positive benefits they can bring to a team, whether it's publicity or fame or whatever it might be, that's going to happen in life. That's how life is. Like every work environment is kind of that way. You know, we're all very political creatures. We are all trying to do what's best for ourselves. And some people get screwed in that process. All right. So if you had a question for Theo that we didn't get to, you can find him on Twitter at Stompers GM. You should follow him there regardless. Theo's great. We love him. You'll love him too. And if you want to learn more about the Stompers, you can go to

StompersBaseball.com. And if you want to buy some Stompers merch, there's a sale going on right now, right? There is. 35% off of all of our apparel in sizes that we have in stock. Sorry, Jesse. Sorry, Sam. Sorry, Sam. Sam, how many hoodies do you need, honestly? Sorry, Sam. Sam, how many hoodies do you need, honestly? Mine is after about 6,000 wears and about four washes. It is starting to pill, unfortunately.

And I need a new one, and you don't have one. That's actually really impressive that it's just now pilling. I know. I agree. I will probably have more merchandise in time for a big holiday sale also. So for those of you who are not fitting into whatever sizes we have online, my apologies. Thanks for your support. We also take donations.

You know, you don't have to buy a sweatshirt. You can just send us money. It works that way. Like you can send us 35% less if you wanted to just support the team if we don't have your size. Or you can check back around November. Maybe I'll have my act together and a more robust merchandise collection going.

All right. Well, I'm glad we did this. It took us too long. Yeah, me too. Thanks for coming on, and thanks for all your help with the book. My pleasure, guys. Thank you for everything.

Miss you guys, and maybe I'll see you again one time. Someday. Someday. All right. So I realized that we did an hour plus long podcast about the book and I never said the name of the book. I don't know whether anyone's been listening this whole time thinking, I wonder what book they're talking about. Guessing that if you got this far, you know. But just in case, our book is called The Thank you. the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have done so already. Daryl Spitzer, Matt O'Donnell, Jack Wheatley, Eric Riggstraw, and David Pendrith. Thank you. You can join our

Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. Now over 4,400 members. You can rate and review and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. You can grab the new episode of the Ringer MLB show, which also goes up today. Michael Bauman and I talk to the Braves ballpark organist, as well as a couple of people who are hard at work on StatCast.

And you can reach me and Sam at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. Have a wonderful weekend. We will be back next week. I'm about to have me some fun. Come on. Girl, we all fit in this jeep. Falling windows up. Blasting the radio. In the back of my truck. Bouncing up and down. Stroke it round and round.

To the beat, man. We just bugging it out. you