Rates & Barrels - Working in Baseball, Pt. 2: Kyle Boddy & Lance Brozdowski

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

This episode is part two of a two-show series called “Working in Baseball”. At this year’s Winter Meetings in Nashville, we had an opportunity to discuss jobs in baseball with several people in different positions around the game. Whether you’re a long-time fan interested in knowing more about the inner workings of the sport, or someone who hopes to build a career in baseball, we think you’ll enjoy these conversations.  On this episode, Eno sits down with Driveline Baseball founder Kyle Boddy, and Lance Brozdowski of Marquee Sports Network. Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow The Show on Twitter: @RatesAndBarrels e-mail: [e-mail] Check out our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Give the gift of The Athletic this Holiday Season! One-year gift subscriptions are just $19.99 at theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is part two of a two-part series that we're calling Working in Baseball. In our first conversation of this episode, Eno sat down with Kyle Bode, founder of Driveline Baseball, to discuss how he turned a hobby into a career. Kyle and Eno also discussed the growth of Driveline, the potential impact of AI in baseball, and the surprising amount of untapped opportunity in player development around Major League Baseball. I'm here with Kyle Bode of Driveline uh, you know, player development expert extraordinaire. Wow. Soul founder, by the way. Soul founder. Yeah. Yeah. Mike doesn't get credit. No, I'm the only one that you point that out. I'm going to tell Mike later. He doesn't credit you. Come on. All right. Um, so, uh, I've, I've visited driveline from when it was just a baby to the sort of behemoth it is today.

And I just wanted you to share with our listeners a little bit of that story of, you know, what you were up to when you got into baseball. Do I remember correctly? Was there some like online poker situation and some of that? was there some like online poker situation and some of that i want to hear some of that like that transition from when you were made it from a hobby into into into a job wow yeah um yeah it was there was an online poker situation yeah a couple different it was a blackjack card counter as well yeah i was recently on jeff ma's podcast bringing down the house 21 yeah so he's my hero so it was very cool so you ever get thrown out of anywhere yeah oh yeah yeah i'm banned from all m life casinos and so yeah and a bunch of places in seattle oh yeah 100 um but uh yeah when i was always coaching baseball at the same time it's what i love to do and i just felt there's got to be a better way to do this than you know how we're doing things

and when i read a lot of research i was like oh i'm a nerd i'll read research papers that makes sense to me you know and man there's just not a lot of answers on how to train pitchers and keep them healthy. You know, obviously I was reading your stuff. We were writing at the same time for the Hardball Times and all those places at the beginning. And how can we apply these ideas, you know, and not just like, oh, walks and wins above replacement. But how can we apply quantitative ideas to just coaching better? can we apply quantitative ideas to just coaching better? Jeff Kalk. Josh Kalk.

Josh Kalk. I'm going to tell him. Sorry. Josh Kalk and Coop Duran. Yes. Coop Duran has some good research about the effects of weighted balls. One of the few, I think, pieces of research that links actual sort of peer-reviewed academic-style research to outcomes for baseball. Was that a big step forward for driveline?

I couldn't believe it. It was wide out. It was open. It wasn't just, oh, Soviet shot putters throw a heavier shot put and they improve. That was out there. But, you know, okay, so then maybe from that. But is that the same thing as pitching?

Right, right, yeah. No, that's fair, right? So I was like, okay, but we could test weighted balls. But then, you know, when I start to search weighted to search what it's like no but there's someone's already done the research yeah and more than one paper multiple papers i was like wow this is a and it's not some bro science it's not a blog it's a peer-reviewed study you know okay uh we gotta test it so yeah i was really shocked it's just kind of out in the open and uh and so you know you're you're you're coaching kids and uh at some point you you made the jump to uh have a facility yeah yeah under an aikido studio

great yeah yeah the cages were like 60 feet long and it was mostly for kids at the time oh yeah yeah mostly kids yeah little league and um a couple high school kids did you have to show proof of did you have like the ballingest little league team that was like the all-throwing 98 or whatever first team was really good yeah no yeah it was a very moneyball style how did you end up with major leaguers yeah you know one college guy gives you a chance sidearm and guy out of harvard was the first guy gave me a chance and i was so ecstatic then you know your first pro guy gives you chances Ryan Buckner so now you know triple-a bullpen coach for the Phillies yeah it's a long time in the big leagues you know took for a while to break

in so he got to the big leagues and then Caleb Cotham was my second there you go the Phillies big league coach obviously was my work with me at the Reds as I like to say it's been downhill ever since yeah but those guys you know those guys give you a chance and then you kind of break into some And as I like to say, it's been downhill ever since. Your first two guys get to the big leagues. Yeah, but those guys give you a chance, and then you kind of break into some other things. You get some interviews with teams that can go. And yeah, and then over time, the Astros gave me my first chance, and that was really formative to guys for three years.

And my first spring training with them, I remember telling Sig, just right to his face, I said, this is going to work. This team can win the World Series. I mean, it was so amazing to watch a young 19-year-old Carlos Correa hitting off of a 90-mile-an-hour breaking ball machine, just putting balls off the batter's eyes. No one's doing this stuff. It's nuts. Edutronics in every stadium and in every environment.

Yeah, that ended up following. Yeah, and the idea was like high-speed cameras, like the cheaper ones, give them to the scouts, get better quality. Then we'll check out edutronics. So, wow, this could be something, you know, so I was, I was along for a lot of that beginning. And that involved David Stearns too, you know, who's now with Milwaukee. So it was a really interesting group of Sig and Lunau and Elias and, and Kevin Goldstein. And it was, it was a really interesting group.

Stephanie Wilco, like a really, really interesting group to be around. Yeah. I'm a big fan of, if you I'm a big fan of if you don't measure, you don't know. They seem to really espouse that. Now, you've got a spot in Phoenix and a much nicer spot in Kent, Washington

where you have hitting wells and now weighted bats, which Coopter had an old school, like it's taken off. But any case, you are hiring sometimes. I don't know if you're hiring specifically right now. Yeah, I always see that you're putting stuff out there. What types of skills are you looking for?

What is in demand specifically or generally? What kinds of people are you looking for when you're hiring there's two areas where i think one that's like really growing i just gave an all hands presentation about um you know where the distance is unknown you don't necessarily want proven full-timers you want to take chances on young talent or they don't have to be young but just people that want to do something different um and that's our ai department we call it the operation so our artificial intelligence and they are uh we have people from all different backgrounds that don't necessarily know how to code wow really even yeah i mean i'm not gonna sit here and advertise more by me like chat gpt and these ai things these large language models can help you oh i mean that catch up they really

raise the floor. You know, someone as dumb as me who doesn't code a lot of this stuff, you know, but it just helps me so much catch up, you know, and when we don't know exactly where the distance is going, we don't know where the field's going and how AI applies to baseball. I've talked to a lot of GMs and AGMs today, but also over the last year about just the use of it. And it's clear that we're much further ahead than all the teams. I mean, I think we're more interested in stuff. It's fundamentally a large language models as part of this,

right? So it's fundamentally a language based technology right now where you're talking about turning words and just. Yeah. And the big one, that's one big part. Yeah. So you need the words.

So you need the words. So what words are you training it on without giving away your secrets? It turns out that running an athlete management system at a loss for 10 years and you have messages, you got lots of words and programs, right? Programs are nothing but words. Like how weighted and you've measured as we're all along the way.

So you can, you can match some of that language to, and we've recorded every meeting over the last three years. So we have transcripts of everyone. And we have this like in our office meetings, like office meetings and also meeting more importantly, we have meetings with clients. So like,

you know, when a pitcher is working with us, you know, we make sure to record that. We make sure that everything, PowerPoint, they see the biomechanics report, their high performance report and everything is told to them.

And then those meetings I sat in one that was four and a half hours once, you know, that's a lot. That's a lot of words you can put the AI bot on. That is a lot. Yeah. But you know,

transcribing, fortunately computers don't, they don't. Transcribing is terrible though. And some of it's led by AI. And I look at it and I'm like, nobody was talking about pizza. Yeah.

Well, the, you gotta, you gotta fine tune them up. That's what I was talking about. So we, we fine tune. Put in some baseball words.

So they, yeah, we fine tune a whisper model, faster whisper, a couple other things. And so we have two transcript it. Put in some baseball words. Yeah, we fine-tune a whisper model, faster whisper, and a couple other things. So we have two transcriptions that are pretty good, but we don't do the transcription straight up. We'll also then clean up the transcriptions, like use a large language model to correct the type of guess

that what they're meant to say based on other things. So like a fine-tuning type approach, and then we'll also do a summarization, because no one wants to read 10,000 words. But what they want is like a five-paragraph summary with action items. And so we have a large language model do that.'ll also do a summarization because no one wants to read 10 000 words but what they want is like a five paragraph summary with action items and so we have a large language model do that they'll do a summarization of the transcripts uh and then give that to them and then we'll make chapters in a video those types of things and then from that turns out well oh this is how our best coaches speak to the best athletes on the planet makes

looks we can train that model and turns out and that's what i've been i didn't know this was coming you know a year ago i don't think any of us did but it's really taken off for sure but that's and that's what happens you don't have a time machine you can't go back and collect data oh it would have been great if i collected this data a year ago okay you can't do that like who would have guessed that having three years worth of of athlete meetings and corporate meetings would have been this like we were like oh it's valuable because then this player can see you know what we're talking about and we don't have to recall it you know that's great that is great That is great. And that's, and that's, if that's all it ever was, that would have been worth it. But now it turns out, oh man, we have millions and millions of

words over the best coaches in baseball talking to the best players about, about our techniques, man. So you can, you can refine your delivery. You can refine, you can test your cues. Basically you can see a cue to cue to outcomes yeah and training right so imagine you know you know you're a new intern at driveline and you want to get sped up up to speed um but we don't trust you to speak to a big leader right away you know by yourself in a room like i don't know you know i don't know you might say anything so you speak to an ai bot basically no it's true you say that it plays the part of a player yeah so we feed we'll train like 10 different athletes and give them like here's the biomechanics report here's the high performance report for this player

and then we know as, as human experts, what we would say. So not necessarily me, but maybe like, you know, formerly Bill Heasel, who we just ran into in the,

in the, in the home, you know, or like Chris Langan, current angels pitching coach. That's right. And you know, Chris Langan,

our director of pitching, Tanner Stokey, director of hitting, how would they do this? Then we say, okay, that's like a supervised learning approach. I would say,

okay, then the person speaks to this AI using text to speech or whatever. And like, it says like, Oh, here's what I think this, okay, that's like a supervised learning approach. Okay, then the person speaks to this AI using text speech or whatever and like says like, Oh, here's what I think this this that did they hit on these things. Suddenly, they can do an infinite amount of training reps without a human ever being involved. So this intern has no to he's just getting better and better and better. I tend to think of it so much about the cues and like, you

know, and saying the right like linking what you're saying to outcomes, but the player is that some of that's got to be pretty noisy anyway, because you talk about, there's this concept sort of feel versus real, where a cue, you could tell a cue to one player and to two different players, and they'd have two different outcomes. Two different things would happen when they had that same cue. So maybe this is actually the future is better training,

better sort of self-training of like understanding how best to speak to to players yeah just getting they can get so many reps in that are you know high value but uh low risk you know there's no risk so um for the motivated person they get that they get immediately their stuff graded back and then if our coach is like no no i like what he had to say actually i don't agree with the machine i don't agree with the ai then you can put that back in the training of the ai yeah and the ai is not all be all, but it allows us to scale this because imagine floor up, right. And imagine three facilities. Okay. We can do this with this, but now imagine 20 facilities. How do we train coaches and keep the quality high? Because as you know, that's my biggest concern is the quality. And this is actually pretty huge for an organization because of an organization that

has so many coaches, there's so many coaches at so many levels. This, I would be sober, super excited to hear this. If I was a farm director and was like man i got so many secrets but i promise no one's gonna implement it yeah i know this okay so this this gets to the next question here's the dumbest thing about baseball uh so here's the dumbest thing about baseball is that this is like a pretty obvious thing he just we're just like we're talking about state secrets here almost like this is like if if you were listening and you were working for a team you should this is something you should be excited about. You should get on. It might not even cost you that much, and it would probably help your coaching.

Like that won't happen. It won't. Maybe one. I mean, I'm not saying that it won't happen for any team. Maybe one or two teams, somebody will be listening and be like, oh, this is a good idea. You know, I hadn't thought of that use. We are working on AI already, but that's a good use. Let's think about that. But not 30 teams and not even 10 probably.

And so I think about, but yet we had the sweeper craze just recently. And the sweeper is like a sideways breaking ball that uses some seam shifted wake to kind of have some deception for the pitcher that went through baseball really quickly the dodgers uh were doing it the yankees and the mariners um and now you know every team is is trying to teach sweepers to their pitchers so you know i've had people tell me the competitive window on something like this is 18 months well that was true for the sweeper it is not true for player development or AI or anything.

You know, we've been talking about how important player development is the two of us and other people before us for five, 10, 15 years. We're not the first. I mean, like I've been, I wrote a piece like five, six years ago that this is the wild, wild West. Everybody should be, this is where there's opportunity. It's player development. We had, we had books from Ben Lindbergh about it.

And yet. Pete Palmer talked about it. Am I wrong that there are still teams that, is it to say, is it right to say don't care about player development or don't care about it in this way or just not investing in it? Like, it's still true that it's still a place that you can make advances for a team in player development. Like, player development is still a place. Yeah. I wish I could say that you can make advances for a team in player development like yeah it's still a place

yeah um i wish i could say that you're wrong you know i wish i could say oh you're simplifying it but it's just true you know because caring about player development is you you can't just name the department player development and be like all right yeah it's like yeah we've got a guy yeah yeah we named the department so it must be good you know so not not quite but um you know to me player development is caring caring about it from the bottom of the stack to the top. And to be honest, that was not – again, that's not my idea, and it's not even the person I learned it from. It's more of a Branch Rickey idea, right?

Yeah. But with Jeff and Sig and all the guys there. You think that the Astro's success – the Astro's success is not even breeding more Astro's success. They're going away from it somehow like i'll be regressing in player development i'm not i'm not sure but i mean i'll know you know my one of the stories in spring training i love to tell and i was there and you know it's like we're gonna meet with every single player i remember our assistant general manager it was like we're gonna meet with every single this is the astros yeah and we're gonna

do that and the coordinator is like all right yeah so he's telling the coaches the coach is like i mean with every player i gotta do my job he's like we're gonna be here that. And the coordinator's like, all right, yeah. So he's telling the coaches. The coach is like, you got to meet with every player? I got to do my job. And the coordinator's like, we're going to be here until like 7 o'clock every day. And the coordinator just looked. And it was – Yeah, and he was just like – He's like, that's our job, man.

He's like, who cares, man? Yeah, what are you talking about? You got something else to do? Yeah, and that's just our job. And I never forget, like the coordinator said, it's so monotone, like flat. And I was like, yeah, it is our job. I wasn't the one. I mean, I don't know anything about pro ball at this point.

That must be how it is. So you spend three years with them. You're like, nice. You move on. You're like, well, certainly pro balls like this. Oh, my. You know, but then you move on to teams like the Dodgers. And, you know, when I was there under Gabe Kapler and it's very much like that.

You know, it was just starting. And from a different angle, right? Gabe's like, they're going to eat quality food and we're gonna care about them this way yeah right so um you know and you find some of your greatest successes and some of your biggest annoyances i remember eating in the cafeteria and someone was complaining about overcooked salmon in extended spring training and i was like that's how you know you've made it or complaining about it you just want to like now you know why double a coaches are so mad at the the players. You know? But it's like, that's actually a success. It's probably better than giving them $5 from McDonald's.

Right. I don't know. And so caring. So we're such a top-heavy organization or like industry where we care about the big leagues. And that's all we care about. We care about the stars, the people we're going to give $100 million to. Right. But the Dodgers win because like, oh, Clayton Kershaw's hurt.

I guess we'll start Dustin May. You know, it's just like the replacement level becomes huge. Just look at the Dodgers win because like oh clayton kershaw's hurt i guess we'll start dustin may you know just like the replacement level i mean just look at the dodgers versus the padres you know when the dodgers run out of arms bobby miller ryan pepio emmett sheehan and not and not being content with oh we have mookie betts he's an above average player by the end of the career he'll decline and he'll be a contract we're gonna send them to driveline and do some weighted bats with them yeah Yeah, and to know that Mookie is the temperament. Second best power output of his career. Yeah, and that he wants to do that. And that's something he – so the Dodgers are not like – they knew that.

They weren't just screening for the best players. They were screening for players of the character that they knew that they could bring in that would uphold that type of tradition. I don't know how big of a weight they put on it, but it definitely wasn't zero. You know, it's when Mookie came, and obviously he's had a heck of a career, and if he never plays again, he's still going to be in the Hall of Fame, right? So for him to be modest enough and to do that, and then ESL is about Mookie, now he's a seven-war player. That's huge. That's a ton

of value for him and the organization. Wonderful. But it sets an example for a Lux, a Miguel Vargas, right? It sets an example for James Altman. But those guys had it all drilled into them since A-ball. They knew that, too. So once James Altman got to the big league... But it's really important who you invest your most money to. It becomes a de facto leader.

Whatever they do on the field broadcasts to everybody what your values are as an organization. This is the person you've decided to be the figurehead on the player side. And now James isn't this guy right now. If they're anti-tech or if they don't care about infield know, they don't want to take extra swings or whatever it is. Not only did our best player swing the way to bats, do all this crazy stuff. He was coming out for early practice. So he could take ground balls at shortstop. He's never played shortstop.

And then he did. And you watch him in early, he's out there at three o'clock or taking, and he's loving it. Wait, he was taking shorts out ground. Oh yeah. No, no, no, no. I mean, with the Dodgers and all that. No, it's just like, he's out there, you know? So it's like that culture of work. So it's like, oh, he, no. I mean with the Dodgers and all that. No, it's just like he's out there.

So it's like that culture of work. So it's like, oh, he's swinging the weighted bats and he's done all that. Okay, that's interesting. Willing to try new things. Yeah, but then it's just who he is. It's not weighted bats. He goes, like, this dude's taking ground balls at shortstop. And he's playing second base.

He's got a full 300 tonight. And not only that, right. And not only that, but he's loving it. He's taking hundreds of ground balls at shortstop. He's never played there. So he was telling us. He was like, I love it. He's like, I'll take ground balls for three hours in short. He's never played there. So he's like, he was telling us, he was like, I love, I love it. And he's like,

I'll take ground balls for three hours. And just like, that's, that's what's good for the Dodgers, but he loves it. You know? And so that, what does that affect that on the other player?

So yeah, to bring it back to the player development side, it's that, that culture of work, that culture of that accountability was, I was really proud of developing that with the reds. And that led when Carson Spires got to the big leagues, one of our first non-drafts for free agents,

I'll never forget it because that generates $30 million of surplus value for the organization or whatever it is, but it's going to change Carson's life forever. You get both sides of it. Yeah, I guess if there is an answer is that it's hard. I talk about it as being a tanker. An organization is like a tanker because there's so many people on it and turning it around and making it go in a different direction. Maybe you are that tanker that got's so many people on it and turning it around and making it uh you know go in a different direction is you maybe you are that tanker gets stuck that got stuck in panama you

know like yeah he's just like um you're doing the 800 800 800 point turn um but you're you know i because it's hard maybe some organizations try for a little bit and then say yeah well you know that didn't really give us any results and and then fire half the people they hired. It takes a while to change the coaching, change the values, change an organization on that level. So maybe people just sort of give up or I don't know. It's life-changing money to be a general manager, to do this. So if you can just hang on for a couple more years and re-up your contract, then it's what's best for your family. So that possibly was rational.

Yeah, but I've never forgotten. So cover your butt sort of stuff. You don't want to do anything that's too weird that will make people be like, well, he failed. He tried this thing and failed. Yeah, that was weird, and we're trying to get him out of here. But you really got to do, oh, well, we'll do this slowly. But then every year. But then your owner needs to give you that runway're also you know every year it's not even about the money for me

but it's just like you're stealing years away from these kids you know when you look at these double a kids that have signed for ten thousand dollars that are making whatever and they're just like man how do you i never you know and that's who that's what i'm looking for when you're hiring you're looking for coaches that that will that care about that they care about that the most and they know by doing that that's what's going to get them to the big leagues not just the player but them you know and i saw that with houston it's like they hired a bunch of misfits right with the drew french's you know now big league coach for the angels or sorry that's very unright drew is now with the orioles uh but drew and chris holt and you know pete patilla

now gm director of pitching for the orioles yeah and then all these guys they hired all these guys who are these guys you know and and um bill murphy he's the big director of pitching for the Orioles. Orioles, yeah. And then all these guys, they hired all these guys. Who are these guys? And Bill Murphy, he's the big league pitching coach for the Astros. Three games at Brown, got fired. So you're like, Drew French got fired at FIU. Chris Holt was coaching at Flagler and coaching at a little facility like Driveline. So you take these chances.

It's not about them. You know it's about their character. And then as the Astros got better, every single one of them gets poached or promoted or gets that opportunity. And that's what we saw with the Reds. That makes it's about their character. And then as the Astros got better, every single one of them gets poached or promoted or gets that opportunity. And that's what we saw with the Reds. That makes it hard also, too, because you have to maintain. You have to continue. As you get poached, you have to keep hiring. But you have to understand

that the work doesn't really end. Yeah. No, we've lost 45 people at driveline to professional baseball. But that's part of it. And they realize you have to build a system around that. So we're like, oh, do we want to put poison pills in the contracts, block their contracts? Or maybe we develop AI that helps us train a bunch of new ones. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's about the system, right? The system is what does it. And so with the reds, you know, like we went from coaches never getting an interview request with the reds with, you know,

before I got there to, we lost, they lost Forrest Herman. I'm not at liberty to say, but the other guy, plenty of other guys have gotten opportunities. Seth Atherton left for USC, right?

Rob Wooten left for a private facility. He got an attractive offer. And then some of the other coaches and coordinators are getting interview requests all the time. That's frustrating from the Reds' point of view, but it's very... I said that on my first day of work. I said, if we do this right, this is what's best for our careers, too. Not just for the players, but

if we develop this system and care, and then these guys get there. When Carson Spires and Graham Ashcraft and these guys get to the big leagues that will reflect, you know, yeah. And it's not about like, Oh, I'm the coach.

I got this guy at the big leagues. No, we do it together as a team. If we do that, we all benefit. And that's what they saw. That's exactly what happened in Houston. It's exactly Cleveland Dodgers.

And, and now Cincinnati, you see it in all those places. Well, I wish you the best of luck. And that's it for us on this interview, but thanks again, Cal Bode for coming by and talking to us.

It's always a pleasure. Awesome. In our second conversation of this episode, Eno sat down with Lance Brozdowski to discuss his path into a unique on-air role as a player development analyst on Marquee Sports. All right. We're here with Lance Brozdowski, player development analyst for Marquee Network. Is that the coolest title of anyone that's done this?

Oh, my God. I love it. I want it. I want that. You know what? Maybe I can petition the athletic. Yeah, there we go. Change my title.

I am player development analyst for the athletic. I don't want you to be out there all alone with that thing. No, that's great. I wanted to – I've known you for a while. Yeah. I think when I first met you, you were a fresh you're still fresh face don't let me say i am yeah i got a baby face but uh you were a fresh face youngster in perhaps an ill-fitting suit oh it was definitely with uh with a with a group of youngsters

college baseball scouting that existed does not exist anymore but it was a fun project at the time yeah so tell me a little bit about from there to here, what, uh, what you were doing at the time and how those footsteps led to now. Yeah, it's a great point. So undergrad, UMass Amherst accounting major. I worked in public accounting for three, four years in the city of Boston. Immediately didn't like it. Just needed a couple of years to kind of adjust and save some money up to pivot really hard

to grad school. Got a graduate degree from Northwestern University in sports media. In between that, those were probably all the interesting stuff happened. I wrote a little for Baseball Perspectives, put some stuff in the Hardball Times, just kind of like tried to create, you know, just like tried to figure out my thoughts on the game and where I kind of fit in the industry. Because I've always had a passion for like communicating in media, I think. And like, that's always funny when I talk to people. They're like, do you want to go team side?

And I'm like, I really like talking to people and getting that interaction, getting that feedback very directly. So yeah, at the time, I was working at PwC and I started, I didn't start, but I hopped in and helped out on the content arm of Collegiate Baseball Scouting Network, which is essentially a company that hired individuals at colleges to get VLO data. And then they packaged all the velo data and sold it to teams so this was like d2 d3 juco where like the organizations didn't have the legs where they didn't have the data yeah so we had some contracts with a couple major league teams i was primarily helping with you know some operations and the content we wanted to have like a content arm to make content and

people wanted to write hopped in and a lot of people from there are actually now in major league organizations which is pretty crazy i also helped start prospects live which is a company that is still existing yeah i was with jeff ponce who's now with uh baseball america i'm detached from them now entirely but it was me and a couple others who initiated that venture live writer who's in a second round interview so yeah i'm not surprised they do some awesome work now um smada, if anyone follows him on Twitter, is a great... He's an unbelievable guy. He did a lot of the data side for Proxmox Live and had some cool stuff. But those two companies really kind of

shaped and helped me realize maybe where I fit. Piecing together some really terrible paying jobs. Yeah, definitely. It was more working at PwC and then not getting paid to do any of that stuff. You know what I mean? So that's the grind. I mean, everyone I think in this industry has done that and then went to northwestern learned some video editing stumbled into a pa who got hired at marquee when they

started in 2020 when the cubs bought back tv rights and they needed someone who knew ball and i was like i know ball and i can also video edit so it's perfect so i became like this very odd liaison between our talent which is like ryan dempster and other former players and like video editing so if they wanted to talk about something very specific for a pre-game show like they'd come to me i'd talk it through then i would cut it generally that role in most media organizations is split where you have a producer and an editor oh yeah they combine me into one and i kind of played this very nice balance of the two and i think it was really attractive for the network.

And I've always loved the minor leagues. I covered the minor leagues, Midwest League for forever, at Northwestern's where I got a lot of my access and stuff and have for my entire life followed the minor leagues and kind of parlayed that all into doing some minor league coach for the Cubs. Again, just serendipitous in terms of timing. Was able to kind of hop in and help them out with some of the guys coming through the system, doing some interviews. They liked me enough on camera to eventually then I pitched my own segment.

And now I have my own segment twice a week on Marquee Sports Network pregame shows. And then that turned into doing a couple of sideline duties throughout the course of the last two seasons, which has definitely been a huge learning experience. I saw you with Matt Mervis' father in the stands. I don't know if that was me. I don't think I did an interview with him. I did Mervis and PCA. PCA's not Mervis' dad

though. No, I thought I saw you in the stands with somebody's dad. I was. It was PCA and Matt Mervis, but it wasn't Mervis' dad. Oh, it was PCA and Matt Mervis themselves because they've just been signed or something. They were coming up. They were like the future. It's always been a thing of Marquis to try to push those guys. That's part of your sideline duties exactly yeah exactly exactly uh that's interesting because

there's elements of specific skills yeah but also a little bit of a generalist angle like this idea that like they hired you for two roles if you maybe had only been good at the production side or didn't have the on-camera experience you might not even gotten that role like that might have been that by knowing a few different skills you made yourself available do you think that you know there's there's always this thing that people want to say like especially in publishing or like writing find a niche find this one thing you know and i think back over my career and like i've had so many different niches. Like I was the grips guy once, you know, and then, you know, somebody very prominent is much more of a grips guy than me now, but I love it. I've been a sandwich guy. I don't even eat

cheese anymore. Like, you know, like I, I'm not a great sandwich guy anymore. So, you know, there's these different, these different niches. So I, I, I kind of tell people like, you know, like I, I'm not a great sandwich guy anymore. So, you know, there's these different, these different niches. So I, I, I kind of tell people like you may find a niche, but like leave yourself open for other niches. So is it, does that resonate with you at all? Absolutely. A hundred percent. I agree.

I think, I think you're told all the time, like you're told a lot in journalism school, you know, especially graduate journalism school, you're told like all these things. And I think most of them like proved to be very wrong but you realize they're wrong you can remember any of these sort of like tenants that you well i remember one that really stood out to me was that um your job in three years will probably be with a company that doesn't exist right now and i was like yeah that's that doesn't make any sense to me at the time and then i got hired by marquee which didn't exist in 2019 and i was was like, it was like that moment. You know what I mean?

That's when they're right. There's a lot of other tenants, though. I think journalism is a very old school thing. It's writing. It's an old school concept. And I really think the industry is obviously changing a ton. The TV rights stuff is crazy. It's impacting the game.

And that is like, we're going to have other mediums for content. We don't exactly know what they look like. We don't know if they're going to be team run etc so like i think that message then applies to anyone watching this that's interested in getting into more media analytics angle stuff like that's there's a good chance you're working for somewhere that doesn't exist right now and i think that's really important but so you know if we are you know thinking about advice, to young people in the industry, like part of it might just be like, if you have a, a dream or an idea of where it's going,

like maybe have the spills, like hone the skills for the job that doesn't exist yet. I agree. And I also think that diversity of skills really works. Cause again, as you said, the video editing allowed me to get in and then convince people to let me do other stuff.

So like having some other baseline skills and going in and doing some kind of work, as long as that company allows you to grow is really important. I've gotten very lucky with Marquis and their ability to let me grow. I know there's a lot of other companies that maybe don't do that. Well, let's, let's speak about that growth because this is a good parallel to some of the same decisions we've been having with the other guests that we've had on about getting your foot in the door in one part of the operations and whether or not like,

maybe in baseball, it's not so great to get in on marketing side if you want to be on operations but maybe within operations there's a lot of different roles you could take on that would still lead the place you want to go so how has the reception been uh how how have they let you grow within this role uh how has the reception been from fans and from the network and from i mean like honestly even from the other talent on the network because you know they may look around and be like nobody else has this guy you know is that like a good thing or they're like this guy it's a great question i think we're very privileged at market i have boog and i it's i think it's very difficult probably to do my sideline role with anyone else

on play by play and i've thought about this it's like what if we do that everywhere like i have an agency representing me now which we can get into which is crazy but like we've thought about that i was like i don't think it would work everywhere you know so it's awesome to be able to work with boog at any capacity as anyone maybe watching this has and i imagine you know him relatively well but yeah that i think he's received it really well and that's given me confidence to do it you know there's been ups and downs with it though like i didn't have almost any on-air experience prior to being on air so i stumbled into this and i've tried to grow it and so the

ability to kind of fail forward is something that is obviously pretty buzzy but i think that's very relevant to me you know their ability to like not just take me off the second i mess up something i remember one of the first things i did was uh a pre-game segment like more on air as opposed to like minor league interviews as a pre-game segment that cubs were playing in colorado and i tried to explain like air density oh wow it's a terrible idea to do and i remember i remember having a call with alan nathan before to like get i was like i need to make sure i have this down let me iterate trying to explain it was great so give me confidence to do it you're talking magnus and the producer's like you know you have like three minutes this is i don't know if it was pre-taped it might have even been live too which is even more terrifying but yeah it didn't come

out because it's terrible and i was way too quick it was way too dense and like the ability for them to just not be like shut down this this project for them to be like, no, we'll give them like, you got to grow. Like the feedback process was surprisingly good, which I often find sometimes difficult to get the creative field. Yeah.

Did the pitch clock affect your job? So I don't do sideline a lot. So I almost don't even, the segments are pre-game segments are pre-game so like you turn on the game 30 minutes they're not trying to wedge you in in between pitches and i have run into that a little with like in-game though you know it's like that's tough too because i'm prepping a lot of stuff i have a lot of stuff prepped then you get in game and like 50 it becomes irrelevant and i want to get i want to get this one thing

in because i report on this for like two weeks. I have multiple sources and it's great. And then like that guy comes up and the producer's like, just can't get it. We have sales. And it's like, oh my God.

And then I have nuggets I haven't even used. You know what I mean? They're great. You got to be fast. You got to be really fast. You got to be fast and simple and get it across very quickly.

Yeah. And I talk, I think I talk pretty fast now, but you should have seen some of my early stuff. So in my head, I'm talking fast. Because then people are like, this guy talks too fast. I'm perfect for the pitchfork.

Just let me roll. But yeah, it's really hard to distill things down to 20 to 30 seconds. I find it very difficult. But I also find it challenging. And I think to some extent, I'm motivated by that. I love, can I get scene effects into 30 seconds i find it very difficult but i also find it challenging and i think to some extent i'm motivated by that i love like can i get seam effects into 30 seconds and like the answer is probably no but i'm going to try to have a try in like very kind of subtle ways to bring it in

just mention and be like i know it's a scary topic but essentially that ball is just moving differently than you expect and it's like 10 seconds i gave you a pretty high level idea what's going on and then you want to give me 45 seconds we We go a little deeper. So like having layers of a topic, I think is really important. And I think initially I only had that top layer, which was like, I want five minutes to talk about this. And that's,

that's a little bit more your YouTube channel where you've got more time and you can kind of get into more advanced concepts. I think that's also important to, uh, for people to understand, you know, that are coming up, uh,

especially if they, if this becomes like, you know that are coming up uh especially if they if this becomes like you know how to for media and you think about media jobs um that the medium is the message like the medium is so important you have to change what you're doing to fit the medium at all times you have to think a tweet is this many words this is all i can get across in a tweet a thread is this much this is what i get across in a tweet. A thread is this much. This is what I can get across in a thread. If I have a video component to my podcast, I can do certain things with my hands even to get it across. And if it's just an audio podcast, what can I do? So it seems like your job has prepared you for that. And you've got three or four different ways to get your message across. And you're learning how to specifically tailor those messages.

Yeah, I definitely thought about that too. And Medium is the Message is, there's an undergrad professor, Will Norton. I actually think you've hopped in on this class before, UMass Amherst. He really likes you. I don't know if you know who he is, but he has a whole class on Medium is the Message. And he's one of my mentors. And he's been a mentor of mine for a while. So shout out to him.

I'm a communications master's from Stanford. Yeah. And I think I had a class that was called the medium is the message yeah yeah well maybe he stole it from them i don't know i'm giving too much credit but i i the name rings a bell um and so uh you know i so i think we've done a little bit i was planning on sort of advice for younger but we've sort of that's been a thread that's been throughout this um and then so you know as your job progresses you know what what about the sort then so, you know, as your job progresses, you know, what about the sort of day-to-day of your job? Like, what is, how do you ingest these?

Like, we've talked a little bit about how you produce and how you broadcast and convey these messages. How do you ingest them? Like, what is the, like, where do you read? Who do you read? Where do you look? I read you and I listen to you. Where do you, where else do read you and i listen to you where do you

where else do you go and and and and get that knowledge where where who are you reading where are you going yeah yeah i'm reading a lot of fan graphs a lot of the athletic i see those are my two primary sources i think it's developed over the years though i've now it's gotten to the point and i'm sure this is the case with you where like i read but i also like i talk to i text with like my my role of x is really expanded in terms of who's in orgs that i read but i also like i talk to i text with like my my rule of x is really expanded in terms of who's in orgs that i know that i'm able to spot in your in your story with what driveline oh yeah driveline this is another great one this actually is great it ties beautifully into what i'm about to say it's like some of those guys all them i i talked to an

individual about lu Jackson's slider. Just a story. I think it was actually for the Hardball Times. He's got a wacky slider. Let's talk about it. And that was when I first started to understand what gyrospin was. And that was a great example. I talked to an individual at Driveline who was tangentially training him

and just kept in touch with him. And then he was hiring for a role that was stitching together TrackManRapSoto and Edg edutronic basically for pitch design session. So, you know, this guy's working on a slider. We want two clips of good clips of bad. Can you pause it right at release?

Exactly. And stitch that all together and put it into a thing. So again, the video editing came in with the video. Exactly. So I messaged him and he knew me from the interview, remembered me and he gave me the job. And I work with three,

four guys that are now in major league orgs card caps i was one of my guys trainer dan moscos assistant pitching coach for the cubs and i realized in that in the time i was like this is cool to look at this data i've never seen this and then i realized like two years later it's like oh actually the value in that job was now that i can call dan moscos when he got the job and be like, Dan, crazy, you're with the Cubs now. This is awesome. I'd love to chat. And then we've developed a relationship. It is funny, though.

Once they get behind, once they're working for a team, with driveline, they're a little bit more, they'll talk to you about specifics. Once they work for a team, they might be like, you're in the right direction. They'll do a little adjustment and think a little bit more about this or this, but they won't give you the whole. They won't bear the whole leg. Yeah, building that trust is really big.

I emphasize feel a lot. I'm comfortable with people telling me things and them being comfortable telling me things and me then being able to filter and know what of that I can't say. Or even just allowing it to make me more confident about something. I think that's often where I use it a lot, but build your knowledge base without a specific thing that, yeah, exactly. I'm up in any way.

Exactly. But yeah, no, going back to like the day to day, like, yeah, it's a lot of, it's,

it's a lot of like in the mornings I'll wake up and I'll, I'll pop on and just look through box Wars and I'll jump to True Media, which is kind of a resource of mine and just rip through changes and shapes and movement. True Media and Synergy are two of the most powerful resources for anybody, I think, trying to learn about the minor leagues specifically. They have data about the minor leagues that nobody else has really. I don't have the team access. They have two different access roads. There's a team access, which gives you minor league, and then the one I have is just AAA major league. But it gives you plots. But TruMedia has ways you can sort stuff.

It's real-time movement. I get it in the innings, so I can watch an inning, then look back and see it. And you can click on something and get a video of it? Yeah, exactly. I like the heat maps in there a little more than Savant's. Savant's amazing. But yeah, that is essentially my palette. How about this? Let me ask you something. What is the movement language that your media speaks? You mentioned this on a recent Rates of Barrel podcast, I remember. Is it IVB? That is the one that I'm frustrated. I know you're frustrated too.

It's just like whenever you talk to a coach, they talk in short form. they talk in ivb so i just don't understand why we have all these other versions like anytime you talk to a coach like on the one that the coach it doesn't make and i've talked to i think a mess of time about this and i get the merit for what is brooks brooks is uh isn't like 65 feet for some reason they just cut down the movement a little bit is that what it is or maybe i'm thinking of pitch effects movement or something. Brooks is like a good ride is 9.8 on Brooks. That might be 65 foot or something. Anyways, everyone should be using this.

It's one standard. Can we have one standard? The thing I run into is if you talk to any player or coach, if a fastball is 19 vertical and 8 horizontal, it's a 19 and 5 fastball. And that language I hear all the time so it's like i don't understand why we on the media side deviated from how coaches speak because we limit the ability for anyone to then interact with the coach or the player about the pitch because they're not only looking at anybody who wants to learn this stuff yeah it's frustrating but it is what it is you go places to uh to do your research you've visited have you

visited kent have you visited Kent? Have you, you were just, I have not been to that facility, but I've been to, I've been to Arizona's facility and wake forest had a bridge seminar this weekend. Mike McFerrin was awesome to have me out and pay.

Did they show, uh, did they show you around the, the awesome. I got a tick tock coming out on it. I saw the lab is really cool, but yeah, there's a lot of,

a lot of stuff went over my head. They went into some medical stuff. They started like going into like labral tears and they had like scopes. And I was like, this is too much. Even for me, I'm willing to listen. They're talking about angles, like levels of subluxation and like all the different, it was wild, all the different biomechanical stats they have. Yes.

That's going to be the news language we got to learn though, because that's going to because that's gonna start filtering out to us and we're gonna i mean that's what teams are working on and they talked a little bit about like the internal brace but i'm not even confident enough to like distill what i heard you know because i'm so far removed from the medical stuff i'm always hesitant to like assume or say anything but and everybody wants to know what's going on with otanis i mean all i can tell you is like it's about half the recovery time and maybe a little bit more risky the craziest thing like the one thing that i will say is i i'm pretty sure this is accurate i'm gonna feel really bad if it isn't but they talked about how really simple concept like the ucl like your tear could be in a different spot on the ucl and i and

that completely changes things you know what i mean right and i was like that's something that came through the otani language yeah the the tears in a different spot than it was before yeah and maybe that's good news yeah maybe i just like that alone made me think of like when you hear ucr injuries it's like ucl injury it's like you have so much beyond that like it could be could be complete tear and like i i can't even and this is probably holding up some of the otani process right now actually yeah i mean they they they and and doctors don't always agree. So you might be taking these medicals for Shohei Otani and one doctor says, well, I don't like the brace. I don't like the brace thing.

Or one doctor says, oh, these are in totally different places. He's totally good. He's fine. Well, the doctor who was an athletics doctor, I believe his name is Mike Freehill, was at this conference and basically said he only does the brace now. He only does the brace now. I believe that's accurate. So I guess he would say that it's not any riskier. Yeah.

He thinks that this, I think, again, I'm paraphrasing here. And I've been hearing that the Aaron Rodgers Achilles was an internal brace too. Yeah. And that's why there's a chance he comes back. The other nugget though they said was that the timeline initially was pretty aggressive. And I believe it was Meister that's kind of like length in that timeline back out so not so now it's not six they're a little bit like like 16 versus six because the idea is like okay if we if the synthetic in the ucl made it slightly stronger and we take the same amount of time then like it's still better procedure right because if

it's stronger at the end of the day but like maybe let's not be aggressive with the timeline but again it's so individual right like i so many things that we don't know on the public side that are probably influencing these decisions so yeah i mean i just think it's interesting that there's there is a lot of i think people from the outside say well if you guys are designing pitches so well and you're uh and you're you're all geeked out and you're doing all this stuff then why haven't why haven't done anything about pitching injuries and i know my answer is they are working on it. Like, you know, there are absolutely have been advances. We're talking about taking something Tommy John that was 14 to 16 months and maybe turning it into an eight month process with internal brace. We're talking about avoiding labrum surgery because we're catching in the elbow first.

We're talking about there's two things that biomechanics usually want to do. we're talking about there's two things that biomechanics would usually want to do. One is to improve your velo, but the other is absolutely to improve your velo with the same amount or less stress on the elbow. No one ever talks about that. Definitely people thinking about this. Velo causes more injuries is like missing so much. Oh, yeah, because they'll even say weighted balls create injuries, but you're missing the fact that weighted balls create velo.

Exactly. And so if they create velo, then you have to correct for that when you're talking about injuries because velo creates injuries. I'm probably repeating what Khabodi said, but yeah, a lot of that. If you're throwing 89, you probably should take the risk to use weighted balls and try to throw 92. Because you're not going to be the manager of the league today. Because you suck. You really suck, so you need to take the risk.

That's what Alex Cobb told me when I was talking to my kid throwing curveballs. He was like, I mean, so what if he rips a bunch of curveballs, gets to the major leagues, and he blows out his arm? He made it to the major leagues. Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. Instead of not, we were cautious. He didn't use wetted balls.

He's an accountant. Yeah, exactly. And then just to be fair to Alex Cobb, afterwards he said, don't take any advice from me. I've had every surgery needed. But I made it to the major leagues. That's true. Hey, you made it to the major leagues.

I guess so. Yeah, congratulations. Thanks for coming on. Thanks a lot. Sorry to keep. Thanks for listening to the second episode of our Working in Baseball series. You can check out each of these interviews individually on our YouTube page. If you enjoyed these conversations,

drop us a note at ratesandbarrels at gmail.com. Before we go, we'd like to thank all five of our guests for this series, Sam Fold, Ross Fenstermaker, Sean Ahmed, Kyle Bode, and Lance Brozdowski. Thanks again for listening.