The Press Box - Ep. 155: 'Ringer MLB Show' (Channel 33 Exclusive) With Ben Lindbergh and Michael Baumann

Episode Date: July 22, 2016

The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh and Michael Baumann bring on Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writer Travis Sawchik to discuss all of the ways the Pittsburgh Pirates are embracing sports science. Then Ben and Michael discuss whether baseball movies are having a moment by breaking down the 2016 lineup of 'Everybody Wants Some!!,' 'The Phenom,' and 'Undrafted.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And welcome to The Ringer MLB show. My name is Ben Lindberg and I'm a staff writer for the Ringer.com. I'm joined by fellow Ringer writer, Michael Bauman. Hello, Michael. Hello. Way back on the first episode of this podcast, our boss Bill Simmons alluded to some mystery man who would be coming on to co-host the show at some point in the future and I suppose he meant me.

So I'm the podcaster that was promised. And now I've gotten my first Game of Thrones reference out of the way in the first 20 seconds of my career at the Ringer, which I think was in my contract somewhere. Like Michael, I am a former writer. for Grantland and Baseball Perspectus, so we've known each other and work together for a while, and I've really enjoyed what you and Mal and everyone else have done for the first 10 episodes, so thanks for letting me tag in. Yeah, we've been waiting for the ringer to make that big trade deadline acquisition,

and you are our Drew Pomerantz. All right, well, they didn't really have to give up in Anderson-espinoza for me, so it worked out well. Okay, we have a two-part podcast for you today. Later in the show, Michael and I are going to discuss whether baseball, movies are having a moment. There's been an extended drought since the golden age of baseball movies, but there have been a few released already in 2016, and we just watched them. So we're going to talk about what makes a good baseball movie and whether any of the recent entries in the genre

comes close to the pantheon. But first, we've got a guest who's going to tell us about all the ways in which the Pittsburgh Pirates are embracing sports science and applying technology and performance research to baseball in innovative and possibly scary ways. So we are welcoming in Travis Sautchick. Travis is the Pirates beatwriter for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and the author of Big Data Baseball, which is the story of how the pirates got good again. And he's been making his own book outdated by reporting on all the latest experiments the pirates have been trying. Hello, Travis. Hey, guys. Thanks, thanks for having me on. We're happy to. So your latest feature is a look at how

the pirates are trying to optimize their players' performance in any way they can. That can take many forms. It could be proper sleep habits. It could be proper training routines. In Jared Hughes's case, it's being super into foam sleep masks, which as a connoisseur of sleep masks myself, I identify with. So I think they've ported a lot of these ideas from the NBA and the NFL, and they've also incorporated some of their own innovations. And there's a not entirely inaccurate perception that baseball players do a lot of standing around. And of course, it's not a contact sport in the way that basketball basketball and football are. So what areas of weakness are the pirates really trying to shore up here? What are the main sources of stress or fatigue and how do you counteract that grind?

Yeah, I think they do believe in the grind. And you're right, this isn't basketball, this isn't soccer, this isn't football, there isn't free-flowing movement. There's a perception that guys are standing around. But there's been research at baseball perspectives that suggests plate discipline erodes over the course of a season. The pirates believe the grind effect is real. The travel schedules pretty brutal, a lot of games. And they're trying to find, as Todd Thompson, the Pirates Head Athletic Trainers said, they're in search of this video game like Energy Bar, just like the Golden State Warriors are, just like some teams in the NFL are.

And they're looking for this. They believe that they're in search of optimum efficiency, and they want players out there when they're near 100%, when they can perform at their best. And this can create a more efficient performance. This can maybe reduce slumps and prolong hot periods. shifts to their ground ball philosophy to pitch framing to they're looking for ways to enhance the performance efficiency of players without spending a ton of money on it and I think like a lot of people doing a lot of sports that this is the medical side the health side

the preventative side they're pouring a lot of money brain power surveying of teams they visited several NFL teams they visited the chip Kelly's NFL Eagles before he parted ways with the Eagles. They've been in contact with the Golden State Warriors. So they've been on this hunt for better efficiency practices. And that's what led to this article and some of the articles I've written about. They're kind of mad scientist practices with the preventative side. So some of the stuff that you talked about in the article is pretty non-controversial. Like, you know, you're going to perform better when you, when you've slept more or when you're thinking more positively. But was there anything that was revealed to you or came up that sort of

or struck you as out there, like you had never thought that this would be a place of baseball team by trying to gain an advantage? Yeah, no, that's a good question. And I wasn't even aware of the Omega Wave technology the Pirates are using. And I just talking to some players in the spring, they talked about this, they called it a machine, but the omega wave system that measures their basically the overall functionality of their body and measures as an electrocardiogram that measures the heart rates, certain aspects of brain waves, science way above my head. And I found that really interesting. And just the idea that

they're trying to put a note in this machine gives you kind of a number and overall functionality what the body is capable of on a given day. And that I was not aware they were employing this or that any major league teams were. So that jumped out at me that they were using this. And it was sort of on a voluntary but not voluntary basis. They really wanted players to get in there and get an idea of their overall readiness and capacity. But I also, and this is a sidebar, but I also found it interesting from a player's perspective, how much information do you want to give over to a team if a team finds out that you're easily mentally stressed or that you fatigue easily to really want teams to know that, but you also want to have your most optimum

performance. So I found the players, from the players perspective, what is the motivation to allow the team to have this information. And that's a sidebar, but I also found that interesting. The pirates also meet with sleep experts, and Ben mentioned that Jared Hughes is not wearing the foam eye mask. And that's not a new practice, or that's not highly inventive or anything, but it's interesting that they're even asking players

to bring their own pillows on the road. And just the level of detail and the overall methodical nature of this is interesting, I think. Yeah, sleep masks that don't touch your eyes are definitely the new money ball. But they work. I mean, I use a sleep mask. So do I.

And I saw a poll on her website that asked, the newspaper website that asked how many men use a sleep mask. And I was only like 25%. So there's, people should really use them because they make a big difference at night. I don't use a sleep mask and that must be why I'm tired all the time. It makes a difference. It's sounder sleep. Use a sleep mask.

All right. Yeah, my, my sleep habits are far from optimal. I think the pirates would be disgusted with. the hours that I keep. And do you have any idea sort of what goes into this daily test that's administered, and you quoted Colfiguroa as calling it a very forcefully volunteered daily stress test? And I wonder, do you have any idea? There's some sort of numerical scale. So if Michael and I are sleep deprived, which we are, then what is our number on this scale? Do we get bench? Do we get scolded? Do we get a talking to from the trainer or Clint Hurdle? Or is it more of a holistic

measure that goes beyond how many hours of shut high you got last night? Yeah. So I, and most of these players are in good shape and they are taking care of their bodies. So a lot of the readings are good. But I think of what my understanding is, if there is, sorry about that, if there is a reading that is not optimal, they have nutritionists, they have the training staff, medical staff, all sorts of people that they can counsel with and meet with and develop better habits. Or maybe you weren't hydrating as well the last week. What can, you know, you need to drink more water? Or did you have, is there something outside the clubhouse that's bothering you?

They have all sorts of people they can meet with or to develop different habits. And I think that's the first step. The training and strength step does deliver a number associated with every player to Clint Hurdle's desk before every game that gives them an idea of their players overall readiness to play that day in overall capacity. But Todd Tomzick says that is just a talking point. That is not something that's a bench or play and a binary decision point. It's just a talking point. And Hurtle has a bunch of staff members in to talk about line up decisions, that sort of thing. So I don't think there's a lot of, they're not reprimanding players.

They really just want to develop better habits. That's my understanding of it. They do want the magic number, but there's also this trust element where the players have to trust that The pirate staff has their best interest in mind. And that's a big part of this. And the pirates really do try to develop those relationships and trust with players. So they'll be comfortable using this. And roughly, how secretive are the pirates trying to be about this? Obviously, if they're trying to be, they're not succeeding all that well because you've uncovered the secrets.

But I wonder just how circumspect they are about all of this. A couple years ago when I was in Pittsburgh reporting something for a pirate's feature for Grantland, they didn't want me to talk to the doctor. They didn't want me to talk to the trainer. You obviously spoke to the trainer, but how much of this info came from players were you kind of doing an end around around the team to try to find out more about this? They, that's a good question. And there's certain guys that the trainers, they've just made available this year because I think Clint Hurdle was tired of answering injury-related questions. But yeah, some of it was just talking to players in the clubhouse and what's new and things just come up in conversation.

and becomes an interesting story. Certain staff members are off-limits. Chris Johnson, who they hired from the, he was with the Golden State Warriors, and he was with the Navy Seals before that. He's a sports psychologist. He's off-limits. We can't speak with him. And James Harris, who they hired from the Philadelphia,

from Chip Kelly's staff, the Philadelphia Eagles, he is not available either for us. So they are secretive to a degree, but it's hard to keep everything a secret. And, you know, there's a lot of teams, as you mentioned earlier, that are experimenting with this, whether it's Premier League or NBA. So a lot of this is just rooted in exercise science and physiology. And it's just a matter of getting everybody on the same page and pulling the growth the same way to allow teams to utilize this.

In that sense, it's no different than getting people on board with defensive shifts or things like that. So, yeah, I think they're trying to be secretive. But I think, like so much of the pirate story, it's not that this is, they've uncovered some secret. It's just getting people to adopt and adhere to it and trust it. we've sort of stepped around this issue, but the main point of skepticism for me about all this stuff is not whether it works, but the ethical implications of asking your employees for this much data, you know, about their bodies, about their personal lives. Like, you know, I know, Cole Figaro who spoke out a little bit in your story. Did you get a little bit or did you get any other kind of pushback of from players saying, you know, I don't want my boss to know every little thing about my body, about my personal life. Like, there are some things that I just still want to keep private. Yeah.

I mean, and not every player is on board with. Andrew McCutcheon says he does not, he's not part of this program. He doesn't believe he needs it, I suppose. And it also comes with the survey that the players use before they go into the mega wave system. And it's like five questions scale of one to five. Some of them are physical. How are you feeling?

Did you get enough sleep? And then some are more rooted in psychology where a common question is, is your mind cluttered or free today? And a lot of players say they don't take the survey. And the pirates want to kind of connect the mind and body a little bit is how they describe it. And they want players to maybe reflect a little bit with the questions and try to be as objective and honest with themselves as they can. And that's why they take the survey. But I think there is some taboo still the psychological side of the sport. And a lot of players don't take the survey.

I think they're skeptical of it. And even Figaroa said, you know, players get very uneasy when teams start talking about brainwaves, measuring those types of things and getting more and more and more biometric data on players. And there are players wary of that. And, you know, I think that's within reason. So there is some pushback. But by and large, there seems, at least with the Omega Wave testing, there seems to be a high level of usage among the players with that system.

And the survey, I thought was interesting because it reminded me of something that Ben and Sam Miller did with the Sonoma Stompers last year where they'd have everybody take a daily survey about their mental state, but they'd lock it in a safe until the end of the season. So if your name is on the survey and the pirates, are the pirates getting that data right away? and if so, does that sort of temper their expectation as to how honest the players are going to be? Yeah, it's daily, and they receive it daily. The players have an iPad, and the players that are willing to engage in that, just type it in daily or take the test daily. So, yeah, they see those results in real time, and they measure the results of the survey with the results in the machine, and they have a discussion why the pirates believe the machine is always being honest. They don't believe the players honest are always Asian.

maybe to honestly self-evaluate. And as Tom's said, you know, players train their bodies to go through this season of 162 games and all the travel, all the demands. And they sort of can have tunnel vision and say, this is what I need to do today. This is what I need to do today. And they don't stop and think about how they really feel. And I think the survey more than anything is so they sit down and stop and think about how they really feel. And what did they do the day before?

Why do they feel this way, whether it's good or bad? So it's almost more of a daily reflection point. And they want them to have that daily time to reflect and sit and think and make a judgment. And one last one last one. I'll get off this. But do you have any, you know, I know you said Andrew McCutcheon opted out, but as far as this being the forcefully volunteered thing, is there like a level of social capital or veteran status or track record or performance that, you know, maybe Andrew McCutcheon. because he's Andrew McCutcheon doesn't need to go along with this program, but James and Tyon does or another rookie.

How is this, how truly voluntary is this, I guess, would be the... Yeah, I mean, if you have Andrew McCutcheon's resume, I guess the club has less, can less persuade you to jump on board with all this. Where if you're Cole Figaroa and you're the 25th man on the roster out of camp, you probably feel like you need to check all the boxes what the team is asking of view. So yeah, I think there is, this isn't, every player isn't going to view this equally as a necessity. And players who have maybe a higher level of performance probably don't believe they, they need it as much. So yeah, I think it's, it's, as Figaro said, it's kind of force,

it's on a very forcefully voluntary basis. And it'll be interesting to see how this plays out with all the wearable technologies and teams want to know more and more about their players that they can measure and have an objective kind of lens with. It'll be interesting, It's interesting to see future CBAs and how this is negotiated and all sorts of things. But, yeah, you bring up an interesting point. And I don't know if I can really give a satisfying answer. But that's the best I can say. I feel for whichever pirate staffer is tasked with collecting these surveys and using the data,

because as Michael alluded to when I did that last summer, which was not for the purposes of deciding who would be in the lineup each day. It was just an information gathering thing for our book. And even so, we noticed that. that as the season went on, fewer and fewer surveys were being filled out. And this was with an independent league team where these guys were not making millions of dollars and did not really have any status that would enable them not to do that. But they still didn't.

So I can imagine that it's not the easiest sell in the world. So could you imagine this information being brought into, say, an arbitration hearing at some point? Because that's when it starts to get big brothery when you imagine a team going in front of the panel. of arbitrators and saying, this guy was most prepared to play only X percent of the time. He slept less than everyone on the team. He didn't spend any time in the regeneration room. So we're going to pay him less next year, and he deserves less next year. So is that something you could envision in the dystopian sports future?

Absolutely. And Mark Valance and the Pirates Closer, who's a guy very much concerned with the stay of his body. He gets his own blood work done, much the same way Jose. Batista does. He's in great physical shape. It's a very important thing to him. And he's on board with all this, but he also understands, or one of his concerns is what happens to the next guy, where he believes in this and he wants his much information about his body that he can get and his performance and his readiness. But what about the next guy? Maybe he is not of the same mindset or interest level I, and what about him? So he's concerned about it. He wonders what

the staff will do with it and if it would be used in arbitration settings or future contract or roster decisions. So, yeah, he's very much aware of it. And he says, again, it comes down to trust and he does trust the staff here. They've earned his trust. But he also wonders if I think he said if a trainer or a strength coach, if their job was on the line, if they had to, if the decision was, I have to give over players information or something of that nature, then would they hand it over? would they use it in a setting, an arbitration setting or something similar? And yeah, who knows what they would do? So it comes down to trust, as Melanson says, as Figaroa says.

And I think that's built up over the years. And I know as you've written about Ben, the pirates have had a very, they've lost few days of disabled list over the last several seasons. They've generally kept players healthy on the field. A lot of pitchers have come here and had great, they've been great reclamation project successes. So I think there has been a trust buildup with this staff. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see how far away that dystopian future is. And do you get the sense, not that it needs to be driven by this, but I wonder whether it is driven by this, that kind of the first wave of the Pirates rebuilding, as you described in your book, was founded in part on identifying underrated players from outside the organization, guys with great receiving skills behind the plate or pitchers who could become better by adding. a two-seamer or throwing inside or whatever it was. And now maybe that's getting harder to do. I was at

Sabre Seminar a couple years ago, which is a big baseball nerd convention, which is coming up again in August in Boston. And Ben Charrington was talking about how, you know, every team has roughly, equally accurate projection systems and they know who the good players are going to be for the most part. Obviously, guys defy those expectations. But his focus at the time was, getting players to operate at the higher range or the higher end of the range of possibilities year in and year out, as he put it then. And I think probably the 2014 and 2015 Red Sox are pretty strong evidence that he didn't actually figure out how to do that.

But I wonder whether that's part of the impetus here that the pirates feel there's less underrated talent just waiting to be taken. And so this is the way they set themselves apart. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think Honey Neil Huntington, the Pirates GM, admitted as much as offseason. He noted how the starting pitching market, even for their past model of reclamation guys, they would target the price or the market, he said, blew up on them. And I think it is.

You look at the contracts for catchers with good receiving skills. Russell Martin signed a two-year, $17 million deal with the Pirates in 13. Then he's after teachers of the Pirates, and the power of pitch framing becomes public and well-known. any sense of five-year, $80-something million deal with the Blue Jays. So the price for some of their preferred models is going up. It's the projection systems you mentioned. I mean, there's not a lot of undervalued players at this time, at least with how we know to measure performance and future performance.

So they're looking elsewhere for advantages. And again, it's an efficiency problem, just with the groundball shift marriage that they use successfully in Pittsburgh. Now they're looking at new ways to improve efficiency without paying for it. And they want players to be more on that optimum end of potential performance. And this is a frontier. It's a wide open frontier. I don't think anyone believes they have it figured out by any means.

But I think that's exciting for the pirates because they believe there is so much that can be mined here. There is so much, there's such potential for a big competitive advantage. It's an exciting frontier. And I think that's why we see them investigating so many other teams and other sports and studying exercise science and bringing on the best people they can find. mind and they believe this is a better way to, or an ideal optimum way to spend resources. And do you have any sense of whether this would be a recruiting advantage for the pirates or a disadvantage? In other words, would guys be telling potential future teammates, hey, come play for the pirates

because they will make you better and they will make you healthier and then you'll get paid more money? Or will players be warning everyone else stay away? They will hook you up to machines and make you go. inside isolation tanks. Right. I don't know if I could get in the isolation tank. I don't know.

I'm a little claustrophobic, so I don't know. And if you don't know what an isolation tank is, it's the pirates have two of them in their regeneration room, and there are these chambers that are filled with its water infused with, I think, 1,400 pounds of salt. It's heated to skin temperature. It's completely black, and players like Mark Malanson will go in there,

float, relax, and there's, it can be a, you can go into a meditative state, there, but it's not for everyone. But it is for players like Melanson to get to your question. And I think if you're recruiting a certain kind of player who's very interested in these sorts of things and getting the most out of performance, I think it is an edge. But if you're a skeptical player, if you're leery of this, if you're worried about the Big Brother aspect, then it's probably going to be a turnoff. And the pirates say it is essentially voluntary, but you wonder if it becomes less and less voluntary, and with systems like, even Stackcast, systems like that, there's going to be

more data produced. If there's more bi-wearable technology that comes out, the players use, they're going to be able to gather more data. So maybe players will eventually find it really difficult to avoid all this. But for right now, I think it's a recruiting tool for a certain kind of athlete, and it would be a turn-off, a negative for another kind to answer your question a very political way. And I'm curious about the response from your readers. Is it a positive response?

Are people pleased that the pirates are exploring every option here? Or are you getting any of the kind of cranky responses, you know, that typical, these guys are making millions and they're taking naps in the clubhouse and they're getting more days off? Are you getting any of that? Yeah, it's mixed. I mean, there's definitely the cranky crowd that sees. I've heard, I've got a couple emails mentioned how Cal Ripkin, you know, he didn't eat any of this stuff. He played at every game for 20 years. So he's been noted.

There's been emails about how all these guys do is stand around. They're being paid millions. What a silly article. So there's been that response. Other people think it's really interesting and think that teams and players should want to have as much information as they can. So kind of a mixed reaction from the readership, and I assume there's been a mixed reaction in the clubhouse too.

But I do think at the end of the day, it's this sort of science and technology that does move performance forward. And it's really rooted in the Soviet, a lot of the the Omega wave is traced back to exercise science and study of performance and physiology from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And whereas, as I understand, the Western world took a more athletic training was more of an art form. The Soviets looked at as more of a science and maybe from chemicals to training. They looked at that But they also, there's a lot of philosophy developed there that's the bedrock of exercise science today. And the creators behind Omega Wave were scientists from the Soviet Union, or from Russia and Ukraine, former state.

So, yeah, I think this is moving performance forward. And the Soviets' metal count was really good during the Cold War era. They made gains. So I think they're, if you look at from that perspective, this does move performance forward. And if you want to have a better understanding of your body and where players are in a regular. the scale, it does make sense. It can increase ultimately the number of wins and right stats of players. So from that sense, I think people and players are open to it. I don't think you address this in the piece, and maybe they just didn't give you any information

on this. But do you have any idea how much all this costs between personnel and training and computers equipment? Is it the hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars? I think the actual Omega Wave system, just doing so, I am not. not an expert on the makeup away, but just some, some research. I think it's like a $70,000 system. So it's not something the average individual can purchase for their home gym, but I think it was aimed more towards Olympic style training and professional sports and Division I College.

Right. So I think that's what it was geared to. The price might have come down since I read that, but I do think it is for the individual, it's expensive for the pro organization. It's a relative, you know, cheap cost. Right. If you're paying like $8 million for a win on the free agent market, you don't have to get a lot of return on investment to make it worthwhile. Yeah.

Yeah. And again, pirates are always looking for a way to create cheap wins. Like every club, in particular, every small market club. So there's no cheaper win than getting an extra win out of your player that your projection system didn't forecast or that your scouts and player development team didn't think was there. And last question, I guess, is how do you know whether it works? and maybe you don't need to know whether it works to try it if it has worked in other sports, if there are studies that suggest it would work. Maybe that's reason enough to give it a shot.

But I would assume that if you are making a big investment in time and personnel and resources, you'd want to try to get some sense of whether it's actually making your baseball team better. So do you have any idea how the pirates are trying to practice some self-assessment? Yeah, Tom Zick said there is self-assessment going on. some of it is anecdotal, some of it is data and fact-based, and he wasn't nice enough to reveal all the self-assessment findings they've found. But just looking at the Pirates win totals over the last three years, looking at how they've generally prevented injuries pretty well.

They've generally had Andrew McCutcheon's an exception this year, but they've generally had star players perform like star players. So, I mean, it's hard to know for sure as the author of this argument. from the outside, how well it's really working. But I know the pirates believe it works to some degree. And even if it's an extra 1 or 2%, that would be really valuable. So I know the strength and training that medical teams are invested in this, but they do believe it is working to some degree.

And I know players like Malanson believe it works to some degree, and other players like McCutcheon are skeptical. So that's about, I mean, that's what I found. It's sort of, it's hard to pin down on the outside, but they do believe there is some positive impact. And how futuristic looking is this regeneration room? Is this more of like a minority report precog bath? This is really what I want to know.

I'm thinking about getting one from my bathroom. Is it like Battlestar Galactica, like Cylon Bridge kind of decor or like Camino cloning facility? What does it look like in there? It should look like that. It's an opportunity. If players are under that, there'd be a great recruiting tool. Right. But I actually have not, I've not been allowed to go in the regeneration room.

But what I'm told exists in there are two isolation chambers, a handful lazy boys, and two beds. So the pirates are big on rest and sleep. And they want players to go in there, sleep, rest, relax, reduce your stress and anxiety levels. And I'm pretty sure it's a cell phone or it's a distraction-free zone. And I think the Cubs and other teams have similar, I think the Cubs built a similar room in their new clubhouse. So the Pirates aren't alone in this. But yeah, it's across the hall from the clubhouse. So it's been in place three years, I believe.

So it's a relatively new development. And, yeah, I know some players really like it. All right. Well, I've had Cole Figaro on a podcast before, so I'm going to have to have him back on to get the inside scoop on what the regeneration room looks like. Yeah, I'm going to miss Cole because he's been a key point man for some good service. Right.

He's with the Marlins now, so he can, he's free to tell all about the Pirates operation. All right. Well, you can read Travis in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. You can buy his book Big Data Baseball, and you can find him on Twitter at Saucic Trib. Travis, thank you very much, and we will discuss sleep masks some more off air. Thanks so much, guys. I enjoyed it. All right, let's pause for a second to tell you about our sponsor, Seat Geek.

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Market inefficiencies, people. Best of all, listeners to the Ringer MLB show get a $20 rebate off their first Seatkeek purchase. To get your $20 rebate on tickets, just download the free Seatkeek app. Go to the Settings tab and click add a promo code and then enter the promo code, which is Ringer MLB. And then Seatkeek will send you $20 after you've made your first ticket. purchase. So download the free seat geek app and enter promo code ringer MLB today. All right. So we're back for our baseball movies segment. And the premise of this segment is that baseball movies are back. It's been a bleak landscape for quite some time now.

And this idea was inspired by an article you wrote earlier this year for baseball prospectus in which you did a taxonomy of baseball movies from the last few decades. And you lamented that it had been a while since the last entry to that canon. So could you kind of classify the golden age of baseball movies as you defined it there? What began it? What ended it? Yeah, I actually just had to look it up because I don't remember anything that I write on the internet for more than 30 seconds. It was from 1984 with the natural to 2002 with the rookie. And this is an 18 year span. I think there were 20 movies that I singled out. There were others that were released in that time indie movies that didn't really get a big release. But it was a

period where particularly in the early 90s, Disney was releasing a movie about baseball for kids pretty much every year. Angels in the Outfield, Rookie of the Year, and the Sandlot all came out in a one-year span. And this carried on through 2002 and generated most of Wesley Snipes' career income and Kevin Costner's career income. And I guess Wesley Snipes and Kevin Costner got old and so they stopped making them. I think you're underrating Blade's impact. on Wesley Snipes's earnings.

Well, I'm certainly not underestimating the IRS's impact on Wesley Snipes's career. Yeah, that was the problem. He underestimated his own earnings. All right. So it's been a while then. So it's been almost 15 years since this sort of golden age ended. And not that there haven't been any good baseball movies since then. You could count money ball.

It's not typical representative baseball movie, but it's about baseball. It's a pretty good movie. But otherwise, it's been really a string of flops and just saccharine, cliched, stereotypical portrayals of scouts in trouble with the curve or, you know, Mr. 3,000 or a million-dollar arm, or just movies that really don't come anywhere close to the pantheon of Major League and Bull Durham and the movies that we cherish. So this year, there have already been three. So the rule of three applies here. We can discuss this as if it's a trend. And last year, I really don't think there was a single baseball movie. I don't think there have been any for a couple of years unless you count that one scene in Interstellar.

And by the way, these are not really spoilable movies, but we will try to steer clear of anything that could be construed as a spoiler anyway. So we've had everybody wants some, the Richard Linklater movie, which is set in 1980 and follows a college baseball team in its first weekend at the school before classes start, getting to know each other, going to practice, etc. And the phenom, which came out more recently, came out in June. This is a story of a highly touted prospect, a high school pitcher, one of the highest ranked pitchers in the country who has a difficult home life and it comes back to bite him once he makes to the majors. And he goes through all sorts of counseling, courtesy of Paul Giamati, to try to get back to the mound.

And lastly, undrafted, which came out a week ago. And this is sort of has some elements of everybody wants some. It's a story about a great college baseball player, a semi-true story about a great college baseball player who didn't get drafted, got passed over in the amateur draft and has this last game with his buddies, which comes to take on all sorts of meaning and significance and life lessons. So I think first I will ask you, what do you think is the ideal amount of baseball in baseball movie. Is there like a golden ratio for baseball to non-baseball in a baseball movie? Because it seems to me that my enjoyment of these three movies was inversely correlated with the amount of on-screen baseball.

Yeah. Of those three, I would say I enjoyed everybody wants some the most. And I think it wound up being I enjoyed them, the three movies in order of how much money it looked like it was spent on the... That too. But there was almost no baseball and everybody wants some. And I sort of like that, like, you know, what is this about? Well, it's not really about, you know, it's about baseball players. It's not really about baseball. But on the other hand, like all the stuff off the field about camaraderie and how college baseball is, you know, this extremely high-level sport that's played by children with way too much time on their hands.

I think that gets it across really well. But on the other hand, the movie that I think is the best of the Golden Age movies, little big league is almost entirely baseball. Like, there's very little off the field apart from the night nurses from Jersey. So I think you could have, you know, very little baseball, almost exclusively baseball, or anything in between. Yeah. That's a non-answer. That's a total non-answer to your question. Yeah. Well, it depends is a fair answer to this question, I think. And I mean, it's just like if you're writing a story about baseball or if you're tweeting about baseball, you don't want it all to be play by play, unless you've sort of established the emotional stakes

and ties to the characters so that you actually care about what's happening on the field. And I think it depends on, like, the two things to really make a baseball movie are how good is the baseball, like how believable is it versus how, you know, how good is the drama off the field? So, like, Little Big League, the baseball is really good because half the actors in the movie are actual Major League Baseball players and the ones that aren't like Scott Patterson and Michael Papagon were actors who started out as baseball players. So the baseball is great, whereas everybody wants some. The off-field stuff is essentially the spiritual successor to days and confused.

So if, you know, Richard Linklater's directing your movie, you want, you probably want more bullshit and less baseball. Whereas if you got a bunch of big leaguers, you want the ratio to be reversed. Yeah. Which of these three did you think was the most convincing as far as on-screen actors looking like baseball players? Probably everybody wants some. I thought the most convincing baseball universe belong to the phenom. Right. But you really only see the one guy who's, you know, Johnny Simmons playing Rick Ankeel as Chipper

Jones as Todd Morinovich. So, but, you know, I thought he was okay. I mean, there's the obvious problem that actors tend to be short and athletes tend to be big. But within those constraints, he was, I thought he was. fairly convincing. He had a sort of a Tommy Hanson hitch in his windup, but they, I thought they did a decent job with sort of the one-man baseball story there. But everybody wants some, most of the action, most of the baseball action belongs to Tyler Hecklin, who was a very high-level college baseball player before he went into acting. And Justin Street, who's Houston Street's younger

brother who played Jay Niles. So, you know, those guys know what they're doing, for lack of a better word. Yeah. And it's sort of a meandering movie, and that's not a negative thing. It's just, it kind of chronicles one weekend in this timeless college era where, you know, there's, there's one character who says, it's going to be one of the best days of my life here until tomorrow. It's just, you know, this was not at all reflective of my college experience. These guys are just kind of kings of the campus. And I think, you know, about 80% of the movie is ballbusting. It's just them. competing and making fun of each other and giving each other a hard time, which I think is probably a

pretty accurate representation of the college athletic experience. Right, there's one actual baseball scene in the movie, and it's not any sort of dramatic, climactic moment. It is a practice session, and our colleague Chris Ryan had Richard Linklater on the watch earlier this year, and they talked a bit about that and how practice was kind of their favorite part of the organized sports experience. So it was refreshing to not really see the typical baseball movie stakes where, you know, at the end, there's a slow motion moment where in undrafted, someone literally his life flashes before his eyes for roughly two minutes, two full minutes of baseball past flashing before his eyes. And it kind of has the standard sports sort of scenes. And everybody wants some did away with that.

So that was refreshing. Yeah. I mean, that one baseball scene was one of my, it was probably my favorite scene in the movie. Just I love, I might just personally have an affinity for for people shouting at each other, like these long, you know, minute long tirades where just one guy yells at another guy, it might be because I watched so much Aaron Sorkin as a kid. But, but yeah, I loved that practice scene. Yeah.

And there really was a contrast with the phenom because I watched these two movies back to back and everybody wants some is just this ensemble cast. And it's all about the relationship between these people and these plays. players and the team aspect is just a core component of the movie. And in the phenom, there essentially is no team. You almost never see the phenom's teammates. There's one scene when he's riding a bus and the camera kind of, you know, dollies up the aisle and you can see the rest of his teammates just stone-faced and asleep, just, you know, not even looking like living beings. But for the rest of the movie, it's kind of, you know, long shots of the field where you can't see anyone's features.

and then the phenom. And it's just this very oppressive environment because it's a story about how this guy lost his control and threw five wild pitches in an inning and had to be demoted back to the minors and get counseling. And it's just everything is against him. There's always a gaggle of reporters stuffing microphones in his face. The trees in the ballparks are kind of crowding in on him in every scene. And it's just a much, much different tone than everybody wants them. Yeah, I watch them back to back. the other night, but I turned on the phenom and immediately regretted making Ethan Hawk the last

thing I watched before I went to sleep. And he was great, to be clear, as the phenom's semi-abusive father. Yeah, the phenom, I think, was very well shot and well-acted. I think the writing sort of let it down. That was the, but, you know, it's an indie movie about baseball. I think even being okay was a relief. Yeah, and it explores this psychological. side of the game that I don't know. I'm trying to think of a good comp for a baseball movie that

conveys the kind of pressure that a top prospect would face. I don't know whether any movie has portrayed it as faithfully as this one day. It's a tough watch at times, but it does something admirable, I think. Yeah, I don't know that there really was a movie in the golden age that was that dark. Like, even the fan, which is like literally a, you know, a murder movie is just sort of absurd in Tony Scotty. And this was just like very, very close in, like, very claustrophobic and serious in a way that baseball movies, which are usually either explicitly comedies or sort of dramas with Bull Durham elements to them. Like sports movies usually aren't that, that dark. Right. So that was interesting to explore that side of the game. Yeah. And I wanted to like undrafted

more than I did. You're a big college baseball fan. I have deep emotional ties to the independent leagues. And this was about a player who's sort of poised between those two worlds. And he's deciding whether to make that leap to Indyball. So I like the premise. And you know, you can tell right away that the production values are not up to the standards of the other movies that we're talking about here. But there are elements of it I enjoyed. If you like crowd reaction shots of James Belushi, you will be thrilled by this movie. If you like references to M. Night Chiamelon's Unbreakable, this movie will deliver multiple times, but sort of has wild swings in tone and it kind of, it sort of straddles this line between satirical, you know, satire and just very earnest. And I can't really tell

whether at times it's going for the satire or whether it's just sort of the kind of movie that gets satirized because it's not very artfully done. Yeah, I think the swings in tone were the major criticism I would have, because it was like it needed to be either that inspiring, touching, you know, the natural style or, you know, like Disney style movie or it could have been like everybody wants some or Bull Durham or or Goon, you know, that's sort of, you know, what it's like to ride the bench so far away from the big leagues. But it seemed like everybody but Aaron, God, I can't pronounce his name. I think it's Tebate. Tevite, Tevite, Tevite.

Yeah. Aaron Tevite, Tevite, TV it. The guy with a really good voice from Le Miz. It seemed like he was in a different movie than everybody else. And it seemed like his character was written into a very different movie than everybody else was. And so it was really funny at times. But it just sort of yanked you back and forth from these 12, like, kind of raunchy, very funny dudes. And this very serious one guy who's going through this very simple, wrote life drama that's all going to end in a slow motion cutaway.

So, yeah, it just needed to pick which rocket wanted to stand on, I guess. Yeah, and it had the look of one of those Disney movies. It was bright. You know, there was no shadow in the entire movie. And there were some musical cues. It sounded almost like explosions in the sky-esque musical cues that told you exactly what to feel at any given moment. So it had some inartful moments like that. And the fact that Aaron Tivate looks his age, which is.

his early 30s took me out of it a little bit because when they were talking about how unfair it was that scouts had passed him over, I wondered if maybe it was because he was about 10 years older than any other draft eligible player. So it has that problem, which wasn't so much of an issue in everybody wants some, fortunately. But just kind of by coincidence, Tyler Hecklin was in both of these movies. He was also in undrafted, looking like a young Wachian Phoenix with a really impressive five o'clock shadow again. He didn't have as much to work with in this part, I think, as he did. And everybody wants some, but he handled it as capability as he could.

Yeah. And I just couldn't believe that they wasted him at pitcher. I guess, like, that was a character they wanted him to play. But he was, he actually looks like a, you know, a college or professional infielder way more than, you know, the holy grail of unconvincing actors as baseball players is Freddie Prince Jr. and summer catch. But like, he's like he's like, he's way on the other. end of that spectrum. And he, you know, he just sort of looked like any other actor pitching,

which, you know, I can't believe they, they had that one asset and just sort of muted it. I mean, if there is a golden age of baseball movies, this is going to be unbelievable for Tyler Hecklin's career. I mean, everything that I've seen him in pretty much dating back to his stint on seventh heaven. Like, they just shoehorned baseball into his character. And I don't know what a silver age of baseball movies would look like, really. I don't know how it would distinguish itself from the Golden Age because it's really hard to escape the shadow of those great baseball movies. There is a great baseball movie for really every subgenre. I mean, there's great baseball movies about kids' teams.

There's great baseball movies about pro teams. There are great dramas. There are great comedies. So I don't know that there is that much unclaimed space in the baseball movie market. And so I'm trying to think of what hasn't been done. I think the Golden Age movies were a lot about historical baseball and a lot about the major leagues. And we're now starting to see the stories about the edges. And, you know, even a even million dollar arm in Moneyball, which were about professional baseball, like are about the front office, which is where we're starting to see, or not starting to see, but we're 10 years into people taking an interest in.

And everybody wants some is about college. And the phenom is sort of that darker psychological movie that the Golden Age didn't really give us. So I think it's different, you know, like how they're saying that they're going to make different genre movies within the Star Wars universe because, you know, we can only have narrative fiction within these expanded universes now. Right. But, you know, like Rogue One is supposed to be like a war movie or a secret agent movie that just happens to exist within the Star Wars universe. you could do the same thing with baseball. And I think the other thing that undrafted and everybody wants them sort of went to college ball for specific reasons, but I mean, that's just a different culture to mine.

And I think the best piece of baseball-related fiction I've encountered maybe ever was the art of fielding, which is about college baseball. So, you know, I don't know that that's particularly suited to be adapted to a movie. But, you know, I think that there's more beyond the kids team and the big leagues, you know, as we understand baseball better, we can understand what sort of fiction we can write about it. I was going to say, real quick, have you seen the pitch promos? Yes, the new show coming out this September. Why don't you set it up?

It's a Fox drama about the first woman to play in the major leagues who's played by Kylie Bunbury, who's the daughter and sister of professional soccer players. It's about her path to the majors and her struggle to adapt to a big league clubhouse. I was, I was extremely skeptical. I thought it was going to be just. absolute slap dash garbage, but apparently they've partnered with Major League Baseball to try to make it as believable as possible. I think Mark Paul Gossilar, who plays her catcher looks dashing in his beard and Dan Laria plays the manager. And after being raised on the Wonder

Years, there's a part of me that sort of looks at Dan Laria and recognizes him as my own father. So that's going to be a good. I mean, I think it's going to be the more I watch the promos, the more I'm convinced it, it's actually going to be pretty decent. Yeah, that would be something we haven't really seen. There was a league of their own, but that is, that's completely different. This is not a league of their own. This is the same league. Yeah.

So I am hoping that it pans out. Yeah. And the other thing is, like, I don't know the last time that there was a successful serialized TV show about sports that lasted more than a season or two. I don't know if it's like if the budget makes a prohibitive, if you're going to try to make the the game action believable, but I don't know why there hasn't been one in a while, or maybe I, maybe I just can't think of it. I guess it's a tough thing to pull off, at least in baseball, because it is such a grind as we just

discussed with Travis. And there are so many games and it doesn't maybe suit the narrative arc of the TV format all that well, but you'd think there would be opportunities for miniseries now that those are becoming more common. A 26 episode season and 24 of them are, they won or lost a game. and it doesn't really matter a whole lot. Yes. And then they go to the World Series.

That was what undrafted felt like at times. Although I will say I appreciated the scene where Hecklin tells the worst hitter on the team to strike out intentionally to avoid grounding into the double play. Obviously a sabermetric understanding of the relative value of strikeouts and double plays. So I think we have covered this. If we are recommending these movies, I think we would both recommend the first two that we talked about. Everybody wants some and the phenom.

I wouldn't say that either ascends. to the Mount Rushmore of baseball movies. I don't know. I really liked everybody wants some, but I'm also like the one concession I've made to living in Texas is just being completely in the tank for Richard Licklater. So that might just be me. I'm wondering if it's baseball enough to qualify for a baseball movie, Mount Rushmore. It's about a baseball team, of course.

But the actual baseball scenes, of course, as we've discussed are few and far between. And I really liked it. I enjoyed it. And I thought it was interesting that the protagonist, Jake, you know, often in these movies, you'll be introduced to someone who's kind of out of his depth and out of his element and you will identify with that character. That's kind of the way dazed and confused works. That's how a lot of movies work where you are introduced to do this new environment as the

protagonist is introduced to this new environment. And in this case, Jake is totally at home from day one and is just completely rolls with the punches and looks comfortable and is not at all out of his depth. So I had a harder time identifying with him, I guess, just because he was so smooth and so competent and so skilled at interpersonal relations. But there were enough characters on the team that I didn't really miss that element. There was one of every type. Right.

There's somebody for you to latch on to. And the actor, I just, when I looked up on IMDB this morning, I assume because his name was Blake Jenner and he was tall and handsome, that he was a son. eye on to the Jenner Kardashian reality television empire, but apparently he's just some dude who looks and is named like he could be. All right. So let's leave it there for today. We will be back with another episode of the Ringer MLB show next week.

Thank you for listening.