Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 990: Long Live Pitch

Episode Date: December 13, 2016

Ben and Sam talk to BP’s Meg Rowley about the downs and (mostly) ups of the recently finished first season of Fox drama Pitch (includes some spoilers).

Good morning and welcome to episode 990 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, and our special guest today, Meg Rowley of Baseball Prospectus. Hi, Meg. Hello. of Baseball Prospectus. Hi Meg. Hello. Meg is here because she and Jarrett Seidler have been recapping in a, recapping? I don't know, you've been gabbing about each episode of Pitch on Fox and Pitch has reached the end of its first season as I understand it and super fan Ben here reached the end of its first season as i understand it uh and super fan ben here uh is going to talk to meg uh about what the show uh has done and so on and i who have seen one episode and for some

reason read 10 recaps uh will try to keep up so um i'm going to basically ask one question and then maybe get out of the way i'm not sure yet But let me just ask you guys both this Given the choice Is this show more effective To a baseball fan or to a non-baseball fan Well I would say To a baseball fan I think in that I think it's

Probably been the show that I've enjoyed The most since it's been on the air And you know I watch all the Quote unquote prestige shows and all the shows that are supposed to be the best shows on TV. And all those shows are... Unlike elementary. And all those shows are great and they deserve all the acclaim.

But I think just minute per minute enjoyment, I don't think anything has rivaled pitch. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Of all time? No, not of all time but just during the time that pitch has been on the air so you you would rather this get renewed for a second season than atlanta uh that's i don't know no i don't know that's okay that's hmm that's tough well the point is that if I were not a huge baseball person I don't think pitch would be in the conversation

I think it's not that you can't watch it without being a big baseball fan But the fact that I am and that this is a show that caters to us Unfortunately, possibly to its detriment Judging by the ratings But I think that has elevated it far above the level it would deserve otherwise. Not that it is a bad show on its own merits. I think that, um, so it's weird because, so my, my mom also really likes pitch and my mom is like a baseball fan insofar as like her daughter writes about baseball. And so she really likes it and cares about it and thinks it's important

because her daughter does. But, um, there are definitely moments in the show that I will watch and think like, well, that's not quite right. The Angels don't need a center fielder any more than the Mariners need a designated hitter. And the general manager can't just call down to the dugout phone. But even the moments where it's like incongruous with what we think baseball is or no baseball is, it still somehow feels kind of like we're the target audience of that incongruity. Like we're supposed to remark on it and say, this isn't quite right. So I won't pretend that it's as good as Atlanta because that seems crazy. But it has certainly been the thing I've enjoyed the most and has felt the most like the show that I'm supposed to watch this fall.

So that's something. Is it clearly the same universe as the one we live in? Is the baseball that happens in pitch, you know, right up to the, you know, to Jenny Baker's first pitch, is it the same 150 years as that that we talk about and celebrate? Did Ted Williams hit 406 in this universe and so on? I think so. I mean, I think they make a point of making it the same. And that's where you really see the collaboration of Major League Baseball at work. I mean, so many shows spend all this time, even the prestige shows that we enjoy so much, spend all this time, even the prestige shows that we enjoy so much,

spend all this time with universe building and trying to make us believe and understand the rules of the place that they're existing in. And I was amazed by how much of that pitch could sort of yada yada by simply having her be a member of an actual major league franchise, even one as tormented as the Padres. And the fact that she is wearing a Padres uniform and sort of existing in the same world and that, you know, the people who were all-stars this year were all-stars on the show was sort of like this magical thing that sort of made you believe it. So yes, yes, I think so. Yeah, there are definitely like players who aren't players. And it gets kind of confusing at times like the Cubs GM is clearly supposed to be kind of an Epstein type, but is not actually him.

And then the other GMs don't seem to correspond to anyone. So I don't know. It can get kind of hazy sometimes. But clearly, I think it's the same baseball. I don't think this is like a dramatically different alternate baseball universe aside from Ginny Baker. Have the Cubs won the World Series in this universe? No, there's a storyline in the season about how the Cubs are contending for a World Series. And

this season was written before the Cubs won a world series. So they are a good team, but I think that's all we know about them. So Ben, why do you like it so much? What is it on a minute by minute basis that is so satisfying to you? Cause you don't even like baseball on a minute by minute basis. Like you would, you would,

you, I don't think if you were on vacation, uh, in a, you know, on, in a cabin and you were flipping through the channels and the Padres and Cubs were playing, you would necessarily stop on it, right? Depends how many channels I get. But

yeah, I enjoy pitch more than an actual baseball game, just on an episode by episode basis. I mean, there were only 10 pitch episodes in the world ever, possibly for all time, unfortunately. And there are many, many baseball games. Soody, and so much of life during Pitch's run has been kind of dark and moody, and Pitch is like this little island of optimism. And the characters are, I mean, it's not reinventing TV on any level, I don't think. It's not doing anything incredibly complex. They've just found a formula that, you know, like the occasional network show, it's just very watchable. It's just likable characters. The writing is often good, I would say, or not bad. It doesn't stand out as being bad. And it's kind of, you know, like sort of soapy at times, but like in a knowing way a little bit, I think.

And so, you know, there'll be like the dramatic sports speeches that Mike Lawson, the veteran catcher on this team, delivers at every opportunity. But then it will also poke fun at how many dramatic sports speeches Mike Lawson makes. So it's kind of self-aware in that way. Mike Lawson makes. So it's kind of self-aware in that way. And the baseball component of it obviously elevates it above anything else that would have all the same qualities other than that. What about you, Meg? I think that it has a sort of optimistic view on what we want from baseball players. So we often wrestle with this tension between wanting to hear a lot more from players, but then hearing from them and being like, well, maybe you shouldn't be talking quite as much as you are,

because what you say is either cliche or doesn't make sense or is potentially offensive and not great. And I think that like any TV drama where you have the benefit of a writing staff that can sort of present the best version of a particular archetype. This presents the best version of a major league clubhouse and a major league player. So we have to deal with a team grappling with the first woman in the major leagues, but then we also see that team grow pretty rapidly and get comfortable pretty quickly and deal with the presence of a woman in their clubhouse with relative ease and then just look at her as one of the Padres and then see them sort of deal with one another, but in a way that isn't nasty or

politically fraught or sort of imbued with all these things that we tend to see with baseball players when they speak candidly and that doesn't always quite go the way we expect it to. So I think that if you're looking for an idealized version of baseball in the same way that you know fans of maybe the west wing looked for an idealized version of people in politics even when they're in you know contention with one another and don't agree this show kind of allows you to live that fantasy and i think ben you're right that you, that's been a welcome escape maybe in the last year. Yeah, it's very self-consciously and admittedly trying to mimic the West Wing formula. I don't think it's done as well as deftly as

peak West Wing was, but sort of in the broad strokes, just it's this workplace show, essentially. But the workplace is something that everyone's interested in. It's the White House. It's a baseball team. And so you have these kind of elevated stakes just by virtue of having this setting in this environment. And then you can show the humanity of the people and many of the mundane concerns that pop up. humanity of the people and many of the mundane concerns that pop up. But then also you can tie individual episodes to milestone things that crop up in a baseball season, you know, the trade deadline or injuries or whatever it is. There's kind of a, almost like a monster of the week sort

of aspect to it where some big baseball storyline pops up and then you get to see how people react to that. And then there's these sort of Sorkin-esque storytelling ticks where, you know, it'll be like they'll show an opening scene and then it'll be 36 hours earlier and you see how they got there and that kind of thing. Or there'll be flashbacks to how someone arrived in this situation. So it's like that. It has the framework of very good TV shows and then it's, you know, it's not getting over the uncomfortableness of that. And of course, there there have been there's been lots of drama, including what a relationship with the star of the team. Correct me if I'm wrong.

So do you think that the show has ambition to be saying anything about gender in baseball or in a male-dominated industry generally? Or is that simply the jumping off point for the drama in a show that basically sees itself as serving the dramatic needs of a television show? I mean, so based on what we've heard from the showrunners, and they've been pretty candid publicly about what they're trying to do here, I think that they are trying to serve as maybe what baseball hopes their official voices around the question of gender. And I don't know if this is me like being kind of a sucker for a well-portrayed narrative or not, but I've been really grateful to have the show on the air and to take the question of a woman in baseball seriously and the issues she might face and the challenges that might be presented to her seriously. I mean, they seem to take that as something that should be contended with and grappled with. And I think you can imagine a version of this show where she is sort of comical and her gender and her sexuality is played for that effect rather than a dramatic effect. And I don't think they've done that so far. And whether that's how Major League Baseball actually sees itself or how they would like to be seen, I think both of those things are kind of, they're useful for fans and for female fans in

particular who are trying to gauge sort of how seriously they're taken by the institution. So I don't think that any of that stuff is mistaken. I mean, it sounds like the league has had a pretty active hand, if not a heavy hand in how those storylines play out. And so you can definitely see their influence at work in terms of how they would like the idealized version of an integrated clubhouse to look. The relationship storyline in particular, not having seen it, I am very curious to know

how you feel it's played, if it is played as, you know, I mean, you could very easily see it going either way. If it's played as, oh, you know, look at this, you know, you put a woman in there and she just can't keep herself from flirting with the boys, right? Like you could imagine that in like a 1950s version of this, or you could imagine that it is simply about granting her full agency and having her have a, you know, rich life that is no less rich and realistic than any person in real life would have. So is this something that, I guess, Meg, I'm curious to know, going into this storyline,

what your expectations were for how they'd handle it, if you had any sort of roll your eyes moment thinking about it or wariness and in effect in action, how do you feel it has been handled? So I was really concerned that this would become a plot point because it just, it just seems so tremendously unrealistic, right? Like you're not going to have teammates involved in that kind of intimate relationship with one another. And I was really worried that it would become the driving force of the narrative. So insofar as they explored it, I was a bit relieved to see that like the first aha moment that you're supposed to have for, you know, a person realizing they're attracted to another human being actually

came from my Klassen side rather than hers. So that seemed to be the driving sort of thrust of that narrative. And I was then very happy when in the final episode, just to give spoilers away, because I assume we're doing that, they decided to say, you know, this is not a thing that we as teammates can engage with one another on. And I don't know, I really liked the beginning of the show where they were having male and female co-workers engaged in friendship in a way that wasn't about them having, you know, a potential romance, because I don't think that's a thing that we see very often on television. And it's something that we experience every day in real life. We all have male and female friends respectively where it's not fraught and it's not tense, it's just friendship. And so for them to take that seriously was really refreshing for them to dabble with or invite the idea that they

might pursue some sort of romantic relationship was uncomfortable. And I think they ended up in a, you know, respectable place about it. But it was definitely something that I emailed Jared about every week, because I was just worried that we were going to have to track this relationship that clearly some portion of the fan base for the show was in support of because there was an official like Twitter hashtag and people shipped this relationship to the extent that anyone still does that for TV shows. And so I was worried that the baseball reality of something like that would take a backseat to, you know, network demands that there be a relationship between them.

And they ultimately didn't end up in that place. And I hope they stay far, far away from it because it would be terrible. It is interesting because relationships are a part of basically any drama, any comedy too. There are always relationships. And other than introducing Ginny Baker into this, baseball, or I guess, you know, gender specific sports in general, are like one place where there is no real relationships. Like we have 150 years of baseball, and we have not had, to anybody's knowledge, one inter club relationship, right? It's this strangely unrelationshipable environment. And so when you choose to make a clubhouse the scene of your of your drama

you're really otherwise shut out of like a very easy dramatic crutch and so uh it i don't know if there will be season two but it like my guess based just on hearing you describe how they handled the finale is that this would still be there like lingering in a lot of future episodes yeah i mean if this show gets renewed if it if it is on the air long enough to like reach syndication then this will definitely come back again i think in some form and maybe one of them gets traded or something and suddenly it's it's okay to explore it but yeah i mean it was it was kind of a bummer when it looked like they were going down that road just because they had established early on that this was something jenny doesn't do and that it's like an ironclad rule for

her and it's very important to her and once in the minor, she sort of strayed from it because she thought that circumstances were different from what they actually were. And, you know, she learned this lesson never to do it again. And then suddenly, you know, it's still the first season and already she's kind of backtracking on that. And, you know, it was partly that, partly just sort of a betrayal of her character because it just didn't seem like she would do this and partly just as meg was saying they had a really nice platonic relationship it was like a veteran rookie mentor you know catcher pitcher kind of rapport and it was really refreshing to see and so i didn't want that relationship to take on another dimension. And I guess I understand the temptation. As you're saying, it's hard to have a show with no romance. And if your baseball team is your life and your teammates are just about the only people you see other than your family or your agent, then where is that romance going to come from. And in the last couple episodes of the season, they sort of introduced a new off-the-field love interest

for Ginny who was, I don't know, I was happy that it wasn't a teammate, but otherwise. Who is it? Does he have a role in baseball? No, he's like a Mark Zuckerberg sort of facsimile. He's like a billionaire who just sweeps her off her feet or attempts to. Wait, I'm getting my characters that I'm not familiar with confused.

You'd be forgiven for that, though, because he's similar but for the fact that he owns a baseball team to Kevin Connolly's character. Right, who is sometimes a stat head and other times not at all. Wait, the Zuckerberg character is not Kevin Connolly, right? No, the Zuckerberg character is like, he's a motion capture magnate. And he has nothing to do with baseball. No, well, he meets Ginny because she is getting mo-capped

for a video game. And that's the only tenuous connection to baseball. So when she's with him, right, that's the problem. Like every scene that's with him is totally divorced from the baseball storyline sort of. So it's hard to sustain that, I think. I wonder who in the industry she needs to look. Again, like if you're writing a drama that isn't real life, your main character, like almost certainly if you want this show to survive, character like almost certainly if you want this show to survive almost certainly is going to have to have some love interests and in particular a love interest who everybody roots for them to be

with ultimately and in this case it seems like it has to be somebody in the industry for it to be to introduce the requisite well both for to introduce the requisite drama and also to stay attached to the main storyline enough so i'm wondering who in the industry could she be perfectly matched with that would not cause any consternation about capital W, what capital I, it, capital M means? Well, I mean, you could have her become interested in a baseball blogger, but that's a whole separate set of problems. I mean, I'm sure her FIP is terrible. Is her FIP terrible? orders removed from her actual performance on the field in much the same way that I have yet to be able to gauge how good a framer Mike Lawson is. We don't know, which is devastating. We don't know really how well she's doing, except that she's stuck in the rotation and is sort of occupying

that fifth starter spot. But yeah, I don't know. I guess the show would have to know what it thinks about sabermetrics before it could introduce a character like that because it is still vacillating wildly between polar opposites week to week. Yeah. How often is there baseball action? Just about every episode. Yeah, a little bit at least every episode. Is she pitching in most of it? Say about half the time, maybe?

Like in the second half of the season, she was like very rarely pitching until the finale, basically. And it was sort of focusing more on off the field stuff or storylines surrounding other players on the team and how their relationships with Ginny were jeopardized in some way. And there were sort of like storylines that crept in that were very like TV networky sort of storylines that I didn't particularly care about. And from reading Meg's recaps, she didn't particularly care about it. Don't care about that brother. Don't care about him at all. Yeah, sort of like, which is like, you know, if you told me that you were going to have a TV show about an athlete, then it makes sense that you would have a storyline about, you know, a relative who's sort of mooching off the athlete.

And I mean, that's a that's a real life thing that happens. But in practice, it just wasn't nearly as interesting as anything else that was going on. What is your guess? I actually want to push you on this. What is your guess for what her stats are? I mean, I probably guess she's like, I don't know, like league average-ish. Yeah. There's no sense that like she doesn't deserve to be in the rotation or anything.

Like after the first, the second time she pitches, it's clear that she belongs there, but she's not. Well, she does go to the all-star game right but it's like it's purely a pr thing really yeah yeah and it you know she's like agonizing over it because she thinks she's not good enough to be there so she's like just okay like i think everything we're led to believe there's one episode where she's throwing a no-hitter but aside from that we don't really see her excel i think she's just kind where she's throwing a no-hitter but aside from that we don't really see her excel i think she's just kind of she would be a generic baseball player if not for the fact that she's a woman i feel like she could be like and i'm looking up his stats now to make sure i

didn't misremember mariner's lore i feel like she could be a 2015 version of rowanis Elias maybe. My vibe from her after the first episode was 2014 Odressimer Despagne. Okay. So he had like what bad peripherals good ERA or something? Exactly. And like, you know, creative repertoire. Yeah. I mean, we never get the sense that there's anyone who who like disapproves of her presence there. Like even the even the meddlesome stat heads who show up from time to time and and recommend something. None of them is like pointing to her ex-fip or anything and like saying that she's about to regress.

Like that's never a story. So I don't know. From all appearances, she is a perfectly fine pitcher. Oh, Sam, you were more optimistic than I was. Who did you say? I said 2015 Rowena Salias. Oh, yeah. Oh, you mean just now? Yeah.

But you saw 10 episodes. I saw one. Yeah. We'll assume that's based on actually seeing film. Yeah. That seems right. You know all the episodes are online. You can watch them for free.

Yeah, Sam. You have no excuse. You're part of the problem. If the show doesn't get a second season, Ben's all on you. Ben, as we talked about two days ago, the discouraging factor for watching baseball is not price, but time. Well, I can't think of a better way to spend your time than watching pitch. Well, Mike Lawson has such a good beard, Sam. I'll probably watch it. I would like to watch it. I think I got backed up on the Hulu delay,

where you have to wait eight days before you can watch one. And so once that happened, I think I decided to punt. But now that I can watch all of them, I probably will. And if nothing else, Kylie Bunbury is really excellent as Ginny. They couldn't have done a better job casting that part, I don't think. I mean, if you had gotten someone who doesn't look like a major league pitcher, I mean, you know, like to the extent that it's possible, she really sells it. I mean, you know, like the pitches, maybe CGI and everything, and you look at them and the radar gun thing will say 87 or something, and it will not look like 87, but the delivery looked great and she just looks the part really. So they did a really good job.

She's a good actor too apart from the the athleticism yeah i think they cast the whole show really well even the parts that we don't particularly care about right like the storylines that are sort of boring or whatever like her brother even though we don't care about him is well cast and um the whole thing is pretty well acted so we uh we grew up in an era where there were a lot of baseball movies that would get released in real movie theaters and baseball was sort of part of pop culture. There were baseball books that you could tell

that somebody chose to make it about baseball. They could have made it about soccer, but they chose to make it about baseball. And so this show is obviously, there was a lot of money put into it the production was fantastic uh particularly well at least not particularly the the time i saw it the production was fantastic uh and there was a lot of promotion and it's a high concept and it got a good slot and i i think and and yet it sounds like it kind of more or less died um uh commercially and that uh it sounds like maybe there won't be a season two do you guys feel like maybe this was

the last gasp of baseball fiction and that it's just it's just not gonna be a sport that gets greenlighted anymore yeah i mean that was part of my enjoyment of this, I think, was just that it seems so strange that there was a baseball show on TV. I mean, you know, like there have been baseball movies. We went through a terrible drought for a few years there, but there were a few this year, but, you know, and there was Moneyball, but to see baseball in a major network sitcom with all these resources devoted to it definitely was strange and nice a typical baseball show starring typical baseball players, but still I could see people using that to say that baseball is not commercially viable. So that would be a shame. How bad are the ratings?

How certain is its cancellation? I don't think it's super certain. I mean, in whatever public press the showrunner has done, which granted comes with a giant grain of salt because he has an agenda, but he seems to think that the network is pretty on board with the reviews that it's gotten and is optimistic that it will come back, even though the ratings haven't been spectacular. I think they've done better, at least the sense that I've gotten is they've done better sort of on the, you know, four or eight day DVR Hulu lag than they necessarily have in terms of the live broadcast. So it may well be one of those things where they've spent all this money, you know, to build the infrastructure of the show. And so it might be worth it for them to do another season, even though they might not do two or three more beyond that to bring it back and

sort of recoup that investment and have a little bit more in the catalog whenever they send it to Netflix or wherever they send it to sort of get, to get re-airs, but it hasn't, it hasn't been great. And I kind of wonder, I mean, I understand the natural lead in that they got from the world series because they debuted the show during the post-season. And so you had people sort of baseball crazy in a postseason where people were really excited about baseball. But I wonder if, you know, because the target audience of the show is people who really like baseball, if they wouldn't have been better off waiting until their original air date plan in the winter when people are desperate for anything that looks like baseball, because otherwise we have to get excited about pitchers and catchers reporting. And so I wonder if they kind of misjudged the audience that they really had and would have been better off waiting until, you know, January or February to debut it and then have it as a lead into the new season. Is there any sort of cult following about it that would suggest any potential that

it would be picked up somewhere else or that, you know, eight years from now, Netflix would do a season about it or something like that? I mean, maybe. I don't know. I think, yeah, I mean, as Meg was saying, I think the overnight ratings were not strong. They weren't like the worst on the network or anything, but they were far from the best. I think they were kind of on the border sort of where shows typically maybe get canceled or have some chance of being renewed, but probably leaning toward canceled. But yeah, I think the kind of time shifted ratings were better. And maybe now that all the episodes are online, maybe if a bunch of people such as, say, Sam Miller were to log on and binge all the episodes, maybe that would sway some executives mind. And yeah, this is kind of an era when you can, at least on some networks, get by for a while with prestige, with good reviews,

and good buzz among people who talk about TV and hope that the ratings come along later. So there's some chance, I think, that it gets picked up or finds a home somewhere else, and I'm hoping that's the case. All right. Well, if you guys want to shout anything else out, now's the time. Otherwise I'm done.

You have anything Meg? Well, I, I said this in my BP review this week, but I hope it comes back. I mean, it was, it was really great to have a sports show.

I think, you know, the appeal of pitch probably goes, I mean, Ben loves pitch. So this proves the point, right? It goes beyond women who love baseball, but it was a pretty cool and special thing to have a show on TV that felt like it was geared toward women like me who really love baseball and would love to see a woman in the major leagues and, you know, know what that would be like for her and to have the vision of it be kind of optimistic and hopeful.

So I hope it comes back because it was awfully nice to see for a couple months. Agreed. All right. Well, if you are interested, fox.tv slash watch pitch, that's where you can find it or one of the places you can find it. It's also on demand and I guess on Hulu too. I'll do my best to Hulu it up and convince those suits. And then tweet because I know you do super a lot with Renew Pitch because that is apparently the official hashtag. And you can find Meg at Baseball Perspectives and on Twitter at Meg Rowler.

Thanks, as always, for coming on. Thanks for having me. All right. So we will wrap it there. You can support the podcast by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who've already done so. Ben Cates, Max Fogel, Andrew O'Hara, Christian Trapp, and Sanjay Markin. Thank you.

You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Go to theonlyruleisithastowork.com for more information and leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you like it. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. You can email me and Sam at podcastatbaseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon.

You can use some questions for the next email episode. We will talk to you soon. Bye.