Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Athletic's Eno Sarris talks about football's analytics revolution and where Kwesi Adofo-Mensah fits in

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Matthew Coller gets together with one of baseball's best analytics writers Eno Sarris of The Athletic to talk about where new Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah fits into the analytics movement in football and how it compares to the NFL. Where has analytics gone right and wrong in baseball? How are front offices evolving and why is it not always great that every baseball team is going the Business School route? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Pollard, you're in joining me. Look, the Vikings had an outside the box hire, so we're going to have an outside the box guest on the show. Someone who's been coming on shows of mine for many years because he's my favorite baseball writer in the world, Eno Saris, who has brilliantly, as I introduce you here, it's weird talking about you, Eno, but you have brilliantly melded covering baseball players inside locker rooms back when we were allowed with covering the

analytics movement. And I feel like you are the perfect person to talk about how baseball has progressed from money ball to being where it is now as football, I think is starting to have its money ball movement. So thank you for taking your time to come on the show. Well, I mean, you're busy with the lockout and all. No, yeah, there's so much going on right now. I have to, just a preemptive apology. For football, I am just a casual fan. I am a casual, as they say, as the kids say. So I watch the 49ers when they are good.

And the kind of fun thing about being casual especially in juxtaposition to my like my baseball baseball fandom or whatever it is like you know i am all in on baseball like all the way down to the minutiae of the stitches on the ball you know uh with football when the 49ers are bad i don't have to watch yeah well and and this is this is how i've become uh with minnesota sports where it's just like i'll just sort of be the moth to the flame of like oh the wolves are fun they've got a good player let me watch that on my tv um because like you said everything down to whether the laces need to be out on a field goal is what we cover here but that's what

I appreciate so much about your work. And you've seen this entire thing in baseball develop from the money ball sort of movement as people start to become aware of data-based decision-making to now where you could fill target center with the analytics people from the Boston Red Sox or something. Right. So I want you to kind of tell me about like the turning points in baseball when it came to analytics, because it has developed sort of slowly from us arguing about whether Alfonso Soriano's OBP was important or not to the point where it feels like all fans all teams are on the same page of understanding like this is how things need to be done the smartest way yeah so i guess you know money ball is is an anchor um but uh it's it was a small

aha moment i think in baseball which was these stats are better than those stats like like it really wasn't that big a deal i mean we we've tracked on base percentage we've tracked slugging percentage we've tracked batting average and to some extent uh billy bean made a lot of bones early on just by saying hey nobody, nobody's really caring about on-base percentage, and it's a little bit better than batting average. And he built a team out of that. Of course, he had a lot of good pitchers. It wasn't just that.

And so it's a little bit reductivist to just say, oh, he figured out OVP was good. But that was kind of the early stages was, I think football is beyond that. I think there are front offices and even fans who are able to kind of look at some of the more advanced football stats. You know, even as a casual, you know, there are quarterback ratings and, you know, DVOA. I don't even know what that is, but it's something about trying to take context out, right? So they're trying to look at players

sort of out of their context and pull them out of the team context and evaluate players. So I think that part is gone in football, if I'm guessing from the outside. Then there was like a sort of a secondary evolution of like, oh um are there strategies on the field that we should do differently based on this analysis that we've done

and so there was a movement against i would say the intentional walk um and bunting uh as being usually uh shooting yourself in the foot and i actually think that's sort of where football is now because we're looking at, hey, maybe you should go for it more often on fourth down in the middle of the field. That's to me like, hey, maybe you shouldn't bunt the guy over as much. Maybe you shouldn't intentionally walk this guy. So I feel like that's where you're at. And so, uh, baseball, uh, now has launched into, uh, kind of a, I would, I don't

know, a third wave, a new wave where, um, it's organizational strategies and, uh, player development strategies that are built on data and technology. And I don't know enough about football to say, uh, that all the teams are doing this, but, um, it would be on the, uh, you know, the football version of it would be trading for a wide receiver that could do one thing. And everyone said he's limited in this way, but giving him drills and,

and finding a way to develop this other part of his game, like, like making him faster. I don't think that's way, but giving him drills and, and finding a way to develop this other part of his game, like, like making him faster. I don't think that's possible, but like, you know, taking a slot guy and saying, well, you know what? We actually think he's fast enough to, to go deep or whatever. You know what I mean? Like just finding ways to take undervalued players and drill them up and develop them and, and put them into different situations and make them better.

There might be some teams doing that right now in football, but that's something that baseball is doing right now. We have all these minor leaguers. How do we better develop them? How do we acquire undervalued players and develop them? There's a real focus on player development, and that's the kind of wave we're in right now in baseball. There are shades of all of this in football.

It's just not so everybody all right that you have teams that have started to do these things and who have really taken advantage of draft pick value and things like that like um it is really funny because jimmy johnson created this chart many many years ago where he gave all the draft picks points and they still use it to make draft trades this is like in the 90s like are guys serious, but everybody sort of agrees on this thing. But if you can be the team that figures out which draft picks are more valuable or how to move on from certain players that you can replace with draft picks, you're getting an edge there. I also think that your scheme specific type players or players that can do multiple things

like a running back slash wide receiver, like Debo Samuel in San Francisco, that, you know, the Vikings really missed an opportunity to do that with another player that they had who went elsewhere and in a more progressive organization did that and won a Superbowl with new England with this multifaceted role where, you know, they said, well, he can't run routes well enough. And the other team said, let's just give him the football somehow. And he'll run with it. It's amazing. It's amazing how simple a lot of give it to him in the flat and see what he can do. Right. I love some of your writing when I'm reading it sometimes. And I'm like, barreling up the baseball, eh? I think that that's right. I think that sounds like you might

have a player in baseball that like everyone says he doesn't, he strikes out too much. He's no good. And another team says no, but he barrels the ball when he does make contact. It's really powerful. And maybe if we can coach up his plate pitch recognition or this or that,

but in any case, he's undervalued because at least the power, the contact he makes is powerful. That's a, that's on that, on that level. But you know, it's surprising to me how similar the teams play, I feel like. I think that football is rife for more innovation.

Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting one too because just like how people had to sort of see billy bean and some of his approach work and get them to the playoffs on a team that wasn't spending any money there's kind of the same thing in football where it's like chip kelly was a 49ers coach you'd be familiar with him he came into philadelphia and everyone said college football strategy never and then it worked right away and so then the whole league copied it and then the whole league figured it out and he couldn't use his own strategies anymore but all the other coaches who had been in the NFL were building

on them and so this is kind of a constant push and pull of like developments and then defenses this would be kind of as if you know you had say hitters were crushing sliders and then defenses, this would be kind of as if, you know, you had say hitters were crushing sliders and then pitchers stopped throwing sliders. So this constant sort of back and forth and push and pull, which has always made the game great. I mean, going back from, you know, the, the very beginnings of strategies and defenses to stop them and things like that. But I think that where the specifics come in and you can tell me how this worked in

baseball is being able to quantitatively look at what, what strategies actually work. So here's a good example. NFL teams have suddenly gotten better at when to run the football and you could see it in their expected points added like five years ago, teams were, like you said, shooting themselves in the foot with running the football way too much. They still run the ball a lot. Establish the run. Right, exactly. They still run the ball a lot, but they do it at the right times. They do it on first and 10.

They do it on third and short. They only do it at the right times. And now they're actually gaining points because of it, as opposed to bleeding points because of it. I wonder if there was kind of a turning point that's similar to that in baseball. Yeah, that sounds a little bit like the no longer necessarily bunt somebody over to score a run, especially I think people used to bunt guys over to second base in order to get them closer to scoring and get them into scoring position.

They used to do that more often in the early innings. So that sounds a little bit like the sort of count, like the, you know, early innings, you know, first and 10, you know, and when you do that in the early innings, you actually lower your win expectancy, you lower your run scoring expectancy, and you're hurting yourself. The only real good time to bunt, the only real good time to run, you know, the only good time to bunt is really when one run

is the entire difference and you're playing just to score one run um and it's not about scoring as many runs anymore and that really is just like kind of extra innings and the ninth inning and so bunts have kind of really gone by the wayside one thing that's uh really interesting in in baseball right now is roster management and because of the rules of what it's like to have a roster, you've got your 26 active, right? You've got a 40-man roster. And the best teams, like the Giants,

one of the things that they do is have a really good 27 through 40, right? Which is strange because you're like, well, those guys don't play that much. Why do they matter well if you bring up a guy if you everyone's gonna everyone's gonna get hurt like you know everyone's gonna lose someone right but if you can bring up a guy that's better than the sort of replacement level that's a baseball idea but i think it probably fits in in football too it's like calling a guy up off the practice squad. Right. And if you, if your practice squad is no good and you don't really spend many resources

on it and you don't care about it and you say, well, we're screwed if we're playing practice squad guys anyway. So who cares about the practice squad? Right. There are probably some teams who are like, no, we are going to have the best MF in practice squad in football, you know, so that if we lose a guy, hey, we can still win that game. And if and what if we lose a guy in the playoffs, then we'd much rather have a really good player,

like like the best practice squad player that we could to bring up in there. So there are teams that probably have an assistant GM, you know, in football. There are probably some teams who say, I don't care about the practice squad, just put some guys on it, whatever. And then there are probably some teams that have an assistant GM whose job it is, his only job is to make sure they have the best practice squad guys. They pick them up. They give them what, I don't know what the contract details are like in football, but they give them whatever practice squad that they spend more on the practice squad.

And then they have more data and tech out there and they're trying to develop these guys off the practice squad to actually become starters. And they think of it as like minor lease, as opposed to like the other guys who just think of it as like a body to put in there in case someone gets hurt. Yeah. I think that the equivalent to that would be spending on undrafted free agents.

So once you go undrafted, anybody can sign you for whatever money they want. And the Vikings have not had a hit on this, but I think it's a smart thing to do is for the price of your, uh, I don't know the guy who works in your front office per year, a couple hundred thousand bucks. You could take a couple of swings at UDFAs that are probably realistically just as good of a chance of hitting as a fourth or fifth round draft pick. I mean, because once you get past the fourth round, nobody really knows about any of those guys. So you might as well take some shots there. The other equivalent of what you're talking about would be to sign a free agent at the very end of

the off season. Who's a veteran who's just sort of been hanging around or didn't want to go to off season camps or had an injury that nobody believes in. This would be the Yankees signing Eric Chavez back in the day. Like he was always injured or whatever, but they were like, look, if he could play like 80 games or something, this will give us some value. There's definitely that in football where you get that guy for 2 million bucks at the end of the year, he's a backup corner, but your starting corner probably gets hurt. He comes in, he's actually good and you don't have to make him like a big player. But I wanted to ask you about, since you have spent so much time covering this and its development, when the front offices became all

people like who works for the Vikings now, I mean, Paul DePodesta is in Cleveland and now Kwesi Adafo-Mensah comes from a Princeton background, Stanford, worked on Wall Street. When was it, or was it just this slow process that all the baseball prospectus people got hired and all the nerds from Princeton got hired? I mean, it just seems like every front office looks like this in baseball now. Yeah, there's been some changes recently, but it's not all positive. It's really Ivy League right now in baseball. It's totally Ivy League, and it's homogenous in background, and homogenous in a lot of other ways to race and sex and like, um, and, uh, there is some research out there that says that, you know, corporations are led by more diverse leadership

teams do better, you know? Um, and so I've seen just a little sprinkling of that from some of the more advanced teams of like looking and getting people from different backgrounds, uh, getting people to, that might have a different perspective to bring them onto the leadership team, to kind of give them a different idea of what's going forward. But I can't say that that's necessarily like a thing that football should follow baseball in all the way, which is,

I don't think that, you know, it's necessarily great to just be like, Oh, analytics is great. So let's, everybody is going to have a business degree and come from an Ivy League school. And that's how we're going to do it. And there's some copycatting.

Some good teams did it and had some success. Now everyone's doing it. But I don't necessarily think it's the healthiest thing. So I don't wish that upon football if that hasn't happened yet. Folks want to tell you about HelloFresh. With HelloFresh, you get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. You can skip the trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. The new year

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slash insider 16 for up to 16 meals free and three free gifts. Again, hellofresh.com. Now, well, it hasn't. And I think that's an interesting perspective because that I did want to ask you about that. I mean, when, when you feel like you might be the first team to be bringing in people with those kinds of backgrounds, your, you know, MBAs and so forth, um, maybe you're seeing it as getting an edge, but then when everybody else has, it's sort of like, this is all, this is what we're talking about with making these adjustments. If, if you're the team that runs the football better than anybody else or shoots mid range jumpers better than anybody else, you might have some success with that. So I think being different is just naturally something that can help you.

But I totally agree that if you have a bunch of people who all think the same way and who all want to put the same processes in place, then they're all sort of fighting over the same types of things, right? And they're all doing the same types of things. And where is the edge? And I think that's really good perspective because I think that as the Vikings dive into this, and I think that diversity in their hiring has become very important to their ownership because they realize things like that as business people. But I also think that they have to keep in mind that you can't just analytics it to death. You can't like everything in the press conference from Kwesi Adolfo Mensah, who comes across as Princeton smart. I mean, the guy is very impressive, but everything is like corporate sounding.

Everything is, well, we're going to have this process in place. We're going to create this utopian front office where everybody has a say, and we put it all in our sports cauldron and mix it up and get all the right decisions. And you're like, okay, all right. But like football though, right? I mean, you know what I mean? One, one lesson to learn from baseball is that we had this explosion of data and tech. We had all these coaches that went out there and the first wave of coaches was eager to kind of confront the old way of doing things. And they came in with all the data and tech and all the isms and the, you know, the buzzwords and eager to tell everybody how much they knew and how much the old way was wrong, right? And so many of them came in and there was conflict. And so we're actually in this sort of second wave now where

people are realizing that culture matters and not just culture, like cultural analytics, but like culture as in, are we kind to each other? Do we value each other's opinion? Do we value different opinions? Do we value different backgrounds? And also a culture of making actual links to the players are trying to coach like actually listening to the players and like having them as a source of data and input and and having good relationships that for for coaches that we're realizing it's not just what you know, it's like how you can get it across and how you connect with people. Um, and so there is that danger if, if, if football is kind of like entering this kind of analytics everywhere phase, that some of the first wave guys

may be ones that use all the bud were buzzwords and, um, are eager to kind of smash everything with their analytics hammer and and then lose sight of the fact that well-run organizations, corporations, even mom and pop, even well-run bakeries are built on the fact that the people like to work with each other. They feel like they have some autonomy. They have some say in what's going on and that they're connecting with other people. They like to go to work. That's something that's important, I think, across America right now. And so it's just something just to keep in mind as you're trying to change systems is like maybe there's someone here that has a lot of accumulated football knowledge that's not necessarily analytics and everyone loves him. And maybe I don't need to fire him.

Like maybe there's another role that he's better in or something, but like everyone loves to work with him. So like, you know, maybe we should just listen to him and find a way to make the analytics work with this old school knowledge as well. Don't make the mistake that Robert De Niroro made in casino by firing the wrong guy and that's spun everything out of control also don't get with the wrong girl because that could be a problem as well um but uh no this is a really good point because this was a huge issue that we just went through with the previous management is that they did not give af what the players had to say about anything. And what that

resulted in was a lot of disgruntled players, including one that was so disgruntled, they traded him away and he's done nothing but win a bunch of football games with another team. And like, whoops. But that's the thing, right? And I think that people look at certain types of football players and talk about how they're divas and everything else if they have anything to say about their situation. But this goes for all people who work everywhere. No matter where you work, you want to feel valued and heard about your perspective, especially if you're on the ground level. And I think this is something they understand, but it's always something that everyone's going to say. No one would ever go to a podium and say, yeah, players, you keep your mouth shut.

You shut up. You block. You shut your face. But I want you to speak to because I have found with football players are just I mean, they're incredibly knowledgeable and and many are very, very smart. And since you've had similar interactions of, you know, trying to kind of get to the bottom of certain things with very bright players. I want you to speak to that with baseball of how players have come to really understand

all of these things with, uh, the, the information that's available to them. They have Google just like you do. And I think it's fascinating how many baseball players and how many football players really understand things a lot of the time at the same level as the people making the calls. Yeah. And also sometimes better and just have a different perspective. I mean, you think like the joke about bloggers and I was one, that's how I came to be a writer and change careers was I started out as a basement style blogger, you know, and the joke is, you know, mother's basement out of touch. And especially in baseball, if you're an analytics guy, you know, thinks of the players as random number generators

and and thinks that they know better than all the coaches and all the players. Right. So, you know, getting into the clubhouse is a real eye-opening experience for me. Just getting there and speaking to players, just really, I was amazed at how smart they are about their craft. And maybe, you know, the lexicon is different. Maybe the words are slightly different. But we can do better as analysts and as sort of stat creators to, uh, to line

our findings up with them and make it accessible to them. I love the fact that now there's a set called barrels. I got yelled at once, uh, for talking too analytically to a player. And he said, no, it's all about barrels. It's all we care about. Well, Hey, like, you know, years later, we created a stat to kind of capture that. And, uh, now we have a stat called barrels and now we can kind of, uh, you know, speak a more common language. The stat cast, uh, is this thing in baseball that has that

directly measures stuff. And so now, uh, players are, they're competitive and, um, they can understand like, Oh, I threw this ball 98 miles an hour, or I hit this ball 98 miles an hour. Uh, these are sort of directly tracked. Oh, my sprint speed is this. They can understand that. Um, and so it has led to a bridging of the gap in a way of, uh, not necessarily, you know, DVOA or wins above replacement, you know, uh, you know, these big numbers that are black box and, you know, have all this judgment, you know, in them and are kind of hard to understand. You know, now we have these directly measured numbers, you know, like I guess it'd be equivalent as like, oh, I can, you know, I can box jump this or, you know, like, you know, football players can speak that language. But then generally just finding a way to, you know, one thing I do is I create numbers as a third character in the conversation and allow for the numbers to be wrong.

And one of the reasons I think this is because baseball has such a rich analytical history that we've found things and then found the opposite. And, you know, like we found that we were wrong. So like, is this Babbitt Babbitt used to drive me crazy. Oh yeah. Like for hitters. So hitters, if they put the ball in play, the league, uh, gets, has a two 90 batting average, you know, basically year after year. And so we used to think that if a hitter uh had like a 350 batting average on balls in play that he was just lucky and so for there was a whole early round of analysis that there'd just be like mike trout lucky you know and now we can say well actually if you can run fast if you can hit the ball hard if you don't pull everything you kind of spray the ball you're hard to defend you can actually run a a person like a player can run a babbitt of 330 340 350 even if the league is 290 you know um well i'm sorry to interrupt but i think that's a great

point well first of all babbitt used to drive me nuts because i did minor league play by play and i would watch the dudes who hit the ball harder and barreled up the ball and talk with the scouts. And that's the thing they would look for who barrels up the ball the most. And when they would hit it harder, this is crazy to think about when they would hit it harder. The other team didn't feel that as much. And it was just like, guys, there are players. I mean, there would be players who were 23rd round draft picks who barreled up the ball all the time. You'd be like, that guy's going somewhere. And there were first round draft picks who never did, and you'd be like, that's not going to happen. They would just, you know, my whole thing was,

well, then why do pitchers always have such low BABIPs? Because they can't hit the ball hard, right? So anyway, that one always used to drive me nuts. But that's a great point, though, that I was going to make about football. As we are figuring a lot of things out there might be something that is wrong and and I think that what you have to be as Kweisi Adolfo Menta taking over as the general manager of this team is you have to be like a kind of a shapeshifter as you find new information because we are just really starting it's like yes there are charts that

tell you when to go for it on fourth down. But I think that teams are still missing other things about going for it on fourth down. If you're on your own 10-yard line and you miss on a fourth down, the other team scores. That sounds like a tragedy, but you get the ball back super quick. And there's something to that that Madden players have found success with. It's okay to give up the ball to the other team in the red zone because, A, a lot of times seven out of 10 or three out of 10, you stop them in the red zone, the kick a field goal. So that's great. Uh, maybe one or two times they go for it on their fourth down, you stop them. So it's only like 50, 60. And sometimes time is the most precious thing.

Yes, that's exactly right. And there's a clock. So then like they score, but you get the ball back if your offense is that kind of thing. So I like um that's a great thing to bring up is that if you're going to be this person you still always need to be staying ahead of that and be willing to change and not say these are these are the things that i research that work and i'm just going to do them because somebody else will find the other stuff yeah so you know the you know, the Baltimore Orioles just, you know, made a bunch of player development hires and they're trying to rebuild and there's like three or three or four and it hasn't been working. And they'd already tried to like made a bunch of player development hires and the first

round didn't work. And then they recently announced a bunch of new player and they said, these this group, we really prioritize humility and growth mindset so growth mindset is uh this is what we know this is the best of what we know now but we might know more later you know that's why i create that extra person in the room stats can be it's not infallible it's just it's it's a guide for us but you know we we listen to it but it might be wrong and if you have something else to say say it so that we can have a conversation with the stats you know that's the growth mindset and then, and the humility to

think that like, yeah, I think I know everything there. I think I know as much as there is to know right now, but Hey, you might, you might say something like there, there are baseball players who say something and I'm just like, what, you know, like that, that just, just breaks my brain. I have to rethink a lot of things now that you said that. So yeah, the growth mindset and humility are not, and those are not necessarily things you associate with like nerds, stat nerds, right? So that's the, when you get those things with a stat nerd, that's a really powerful.

So if that's the executive you got, then that'll be super powerful. If you get the sort of round one executive that's just all like, it's all about the numbers and y'all don't know anything, then that'll be a rough hoe too. Right, which of course, again, you know, Kweisi. It's hard to tell from the beginning. Right.

The opening press conference, nobody's going to say that, you know, we would prefer that, you know, players don't have growth mindsets. Like no one's going to, you know, it all sounds good. But I think that that players don't have growth mindsets. It all sounds good. But I think that that's really fascinating. And that's what we talk about where Adolfo Mensah did not want to say that he's an analytics guy. Because I think that he's right in doing this because it's just so much more broad. It's like really taking a flashlight and looking around as opposed to just using the light from outside, like trying to find every edge and every corner of where you could

possibly get ahead. Because I think of, I bring this up sometimes on the show, but I think of football is like chess and all sports are like this, where when two grandmasters play each other, it's one tiny little precision move that's missed it's the slightest inaccuracy they don't blunder and that's with teams that have all these all this money and all these executives and all these smart people it's not like they just completely miss all the time it's really the small edges that end up making the difference yeah i agree um and then there's of course uh chaos which uh leads us well it leads us to bad decisions because we thought like you know we thought maybe we think our process was wrong because

the outcome was wrong but maybe the process was right and the outcome just was chaos i mean there's there's uh outstanding achievements by players that sort of uh boggle the mind and and and break the schemes right uh and then there's injury, which can just come at the wrong moment and just make everything look a lot worse than it was supposed to. So, you know, those are the two big things of chaos for me are just the way – in baseball, I think it's more obvious how much chaos is involved because pitchers get injured a lot, and so that's just a huge part of it. And then also

the ball is literally bouncing. But I think, I think, you know, in football, I've heard people talk about takeaways and fumbles and stuff and how like it's it's possible to have a defense that forces fumbles. But it's not a year to year. There's no, it's, there's no correlation to like how many of them you actually get back. Yes. The ball is literally an oblong thing. Stupid shaped. Yeah. Yeah.

Doesn't make any sense. Bouncing around. Sometimes if you force a bunch of fumbles, that's great. And you should keep doing that. And if you didn't get them a bunch one year, it doesn't mean that you were doing the wrong thing. It just meant that that thing bounced the wrong way.

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I've told you about all the great football designs, but they've added a few more, including the Axe is Back for Minnesota football fans. You can get that on a shirt, on a hat. And also Randy Moss is the Goat, the Purple People Eaters, Bud Grant designs for the old school fan. Plus the hockey and basketball teams are both actually exciting this year. And SodaStick has you covered there as well go to soda stick that.com that is s-o-t-a-s-t-i-c-k.com and use the code purple insider for 15 off right every other sport went round and football was like what if what if we had a hand egg uh but that uh that was uh one of the last things that was sort of

on my list to ask you was about the process versus results idea because there's a part of me and look you and i have something in common we both played rec league basketball okay so we are competitors and i know you're a psychopath out there and so here here's the thing when quesia daful mensa comes up to the podium and he says, look, if we lose, but we had the right process, I'm okay with it. I'm like, no, you're not. No way you are, right? That's not possible because your fans won't be and your owners won't be. The only thing that matters is that you win. And your point about chaos is exactly right. But I heard something that was really interesting. your point about chaos is exactly right. And, but I heard something

that was really interesting. I'd love your take on this. Stan Van Gundy once was talking about a play that he called at the end of a playoff game that he thought was a great play and had every reason to do it. And it didn't work. And Van Gundy, the interviewer was like, well, you nailed it though. Right? I mean, you called the right play. And he's like, no, I didn't. It failed. It's not right if it failed. Like then, well, what else would you have done? I don't know, but not that because it failed. And so I guess I wonder how you sort of deal with that because I think what the Vikings are talking about

is right process in a lot of different ways of things that they're doing in the front office and being progressive, cutting edge, whatever, collaborative, all these right words. But if it doesn't work, you're all fired. And I guess I always go, I don't know if I want to hear the guy tell me the results don't matter. He can live with them because nobody can live with losing. Yeah. You know what I actually hear when I hear something like that? Give me time. Yes. Great point. Give me time. I think he's saying part of the quote unquote process might be losing on

purpose. You know, that's, I mean, maybe it's my baseball background. We have a bunch of tankers. I don't know how much tanking helps in football, but I can't imagine that it wouldn't help to have a bunch of high draft

picks for a couple of years. It does. And especially with the way that drafting and football works, like those players all play. Like I think it would be actually probably better in football to tank than baseball because in baseball, even the first rounders have a 50% chance of playing in the big leagues. But in,

in football, it's more like a 75, 90% chance you play in the big leagues in the first round. Right. So, yeah, I would think I would think that when I hear that, I hear maybe part of the process is losing. And that's just it just it's a it's a tough taste to have in the mouth as a fan. You know, we're just like, OK, so can you tell me when to wake up and turn the Vikings back on again? But I think he's probably trying to bide his time

because if they go 4-12 next year and have a bunch of high draft picks, he says, well, we changed a lot of processes. We think we're doing things the right way. We think it's going to go better next year, and maybe it will because they'll have a bunch of new players. And then it'll often depend on the pure luck of the draft, which is everybody can process the hell out of that. But you basically,

if you draft in the first round, it all depends on your draft slot, like you said. And that's why tanking makes sense in every sport. What I, what I would say is I'm always amazed that um somebody like you you have no idea what's going on with the vikings aside from my random tweet that probably pops up every once in a while in your feed and yet you're nailing it with everything about that like that's exactly right

i think that's exactly right is i'm going to need some time i don't think they're going to tank so to speak because they've got probably too many good players to tank, but it means there's going to be some losing. And I think that one thing that is very cool is fans understanding of how all of this works and they've seen it across sports for many years. And this is like the world we live in. I think fans are much more up for, all right, let's see all the young players play and see what we've got for a year. And then we'll set our expectations higher as opposed to, well, what do you mean we might not make the playoffs? Like, well, you were trying desperately to make the playoffs before. And as you know, in baseball, when you try desperately and sign all the free agents and everything else usually kind of blows

up in your face. So I think that fans are much more understanding of all of this from reading people like you that there's time for for it for Adolfo Mensah. And I, the only thing that, and you can speak to this too, that the owners have time for it. That's the big question. I think the fans are okay with it because they get it,

but ownership can always, you can have all this right. And they can still completely screw you if they want the wrong thing. Riddle me this uh i think that ownership is mostly about money um uh vikings games still sold out uh yeah people showing up yeah so they did boo at the end but they were still there yeah that's a little different unfortunate yeah it's um it's so different in football because it's one game a week or 16, 17 games now. And so they still sell out.

And then their TV money is in a better situation. It's in a better situation financially as a sport. Maybe ownership in that sport does care about winning because everyone else is, you know, because the baseline is, yeah, we're all making money. Right. Whereas in, in, in baseball, we do have, I wouldn't say that there's teams that aren't necessarily making money, but there are teams that are small market teams that are a little bit more in sketchier situations. But always great.

If you ever visit Pittsburgh, you can sit right behind home plate and you will not have to pay a lovely ballpark last Last thing. And the only reason I kept you so long is because baseball's in a lockout. I would not have done this to you. Otherwise, if you were busy, you're probably busy,

but I just want to hear from you. You always have great interactions with players. And I would love for you to just tell a story about one, when it comes to data and talking to players, I'll give you a quick one. What do you think quick one what you think is one of the things just exciting for me was to go up to anthony bar and show him that the vikings were the best team in the league at stopping opposing running backs from coming out of the

backfield and then just asking and then just asking why anthony bar is a linebacker and then just asking why okay linebacker this is kind of your job. And for him to be like, oh, let me see that stat. Who's number two? Where do we rank against tight ends? Those things. And sort of be interested in the conversation because sometimes, as you know, it could be painful. You know, what happened out there on Sunday, that kind of thing.

But it was really interesting for just him to talk about, like, here's kind of why our scheme might do that. And personnel matters a lot because it's one-on-one matchups and you know the things like that where you can learn more about the game just by saying to somebody hey what do you think of this stat and i've learned uh you know one of my one of the processes that i use is uh to have a a stat that is uh complementary of their skills and to, to lead with that. Did you know you were a top three and blah, blah,

blah is a, is a great way to start. Cause flattery gets you everywhere. I think of a couple of things. One, I was finishing an interview with Andrew Haney, who is now a Dodger. And he was on a team that had kind of been saying public things about how

they weren't that into analytics. And they were led by Mike social kind of been anti analytics to some extent. And they didn't, didn't want that stuff in the in the big league clubhouse. We finished an interview and Haney at the end sort of tugged my shirt and said, tell me about spin rate, you know,

like, what is it? What does it mean? What, you know, and it was, it what does it mean what you know and it was it's hugely important to him uh in specific um and so it was an interesting conversation i remember uh darwin barney was this kind of um utility slash backup uh kind of player and um he was saying that he didn't he was saying to someone that he didn't have any trade value

was near the trade deadline. And I said, no, that can't be true. You're the best defensive second baseman in baseball by at least two metrics. And he's like, really? And I showed him the metrics. He's like, wow, that's interesting. Interesting, I might have some trade value. Maybe I'll go somewhere.

He goes across the clubhouse, and I guess he tells somebody else it. And the guy goes, so you know who, and then he points at me and he goes nerd from across the clubhouse, but in a, in a smiling way. And then the last one I think of was, you know,

I'd done some reporting on how the ball had changed in baseball. We, we, we made some jokes about this along the way on this, on this podcast. And the ball has changed and this and that and um i was uh i also do grips where i asked baseball players players about their grips and and their mechanics and so i was talking to justin berlander and i was like would you mind showing

me like your slider grip or whatever uh and i and i tossed him a ball and he goes he's like this ball is weird uh what's up with this ball and I was like well it's not juiced it's from like 1989 or something and he goes what did you say and I said well that ball is not juiced and he goes stay here for a second and he

comes running across the clubhouse and I'm like oh my god what is Justin Verlander about to do and he goes hey come over here and he had he had assembled the entire starting lineup of the tigers all the batters and he goes tell me what you just said to me and i was like you want me to tell the batters that they're not actually that good the ball is just juiced is that what you're doing here come on justin and so i kind of like i went into the research about the ball and people like well isn't it

just this aren't we just training better or this or that and like i kind of was like well yes probably but also we can tell like the ball is traveling further upon contact even with the same old stat old stats it's going further and uh verlander made me kind of like present the case for the juice ball and i remember i just remember ian kinsler kind of looking at me like i don't like what you're saying that's yeah that's always concerning i had a a thing with um in hockey was my first beat i was covering american hockey league and uh i had written about this they had been complaining about not winning enough face-offs so i wrote this whole thing about how like look face-offs i mean they're basically a coin flip

you're talking about a few a game and if you defend them they shouldn't make any real impact like you probably it's really how you react to the 50, 50 that you get. And we finished up an interview with the coach and he was like, so what is it you're saying about face-offs? And I was like 23 or something. I was like, uh, is it good? Like, do you like face-offs? You know, I'm just like, are you, and, uh, but it was really cool because, uh, later he brought me into his office with the coaching

staff and we talked about analytics and i kind of helped them with some ideas of how to track their shots and locations and how to get into the neutral zone or through the neutral zone like things like that that i had just read from smarter people than me but they hadn't because they were and that's the thing is like it's it's very cool that these people kind of are are focused on these things that they have to do to throw the ball a certain way that they're not always reading us or knowing what some of the stuff from the outside and so getting their reactions is almost like playing peekaboo or something you know they're like what wow running backs i stopped them yes you do yeah but you know in baseball at least over time uh and i think this is because they uh they're dealing with coaches now that are giving this information.

They're they're seeing the information. They're becoming more. So, like, you know, when I go I go to the Arizona Fall League every year and there's prospects there, you know, they all speak my language now. Like, you know, I went and interviewed a bunch of prospects and we're talking about barrel rate and we're talking about exit velocity. We're talking about all the tech they're using, exit velocity we're talking about all the tech they're using weighted bats weighted balls all the sort of stuff i you know they you know they i speak their language so you know i figured that it'll just be easier to interview them as as time goes on and less of uh you know early on i did a step into some poo with eric hosmer who was very angry angry that I was using words like rates and ratios and started heckling me in the clubhouse while I interviewed Billy Butler. That was

difficult. But the clubhouse is a little bit different place now. Now everyone's got every part of their being tracked and all the data uh, you know, all the data and they, they, you know, they have coaches telling them all about it. So baseball players no longer is weird. They can be the most ruthless when it comes to that, uh, with reporters, I think that's no, but that's awesome. I'm glad that I asked, um, because those, those kinds of things are really interesting. And it's a great point that every basketball player knows the mid range thing at this point. Like if you talk to them about their shot charts like they're going to know it um which is just such a fascinating development and it ties in to just the last point

um is just that um you have to communicate with the players because they know they know this stuff they know what's going on and they understand the schemes and they can watch the tape from anybody and they can look at the data that's right there on Pro Football Focus's website and PFF tags them in their tweets and stuff like that. So they know it is a fascinating world that we live in. And I personally understand it better from reading you along the way, from the time you were a basement blogger to all the times we had on the radio to now, as I'm doing this thing, I'm still reading pretty much just you when it comes to baseball. So I appreciate all your great work. It is at Eno Saris,

E N O S A R R I S. You can read them at the athletic. Great to catch up, man. I really enjoyed this. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

It'll, it'll help inform some of my watching this weekend. Go Niners. Sorry. Nobody on this cast wants to hear that nonsense. I mean, at this point, the Vikings, I think, lost to three out of four of these teams, so what difference does it make? They got to pick new favorites for the playoffs anyway. The Chiefs are the only one they can root for, I guess. Thanks a lot, man. Thanks for having me.