Effectively Wild Episode 2362: Poob Has Baseball for You

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2362: "Poob Has Baseball for You"

FanGraphs 20th Anniversary, Playoff Picture, Dodgers Musings, and a Visit from David Appelman
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer), Meg Rowley (FanGraphs)
Date: August 16, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this special episode, Ben and Meg celebrate the 20th anniversary of FanGraphs with founder David Appelman, reflecting on the site's journey and impact. They react to current playoff contenders post-trade deadline, dissect the enduring discourse around the Dodgers' roster-building strategy, and discuss changes in baseball broadcasting. The episode also features classic banter, email questions from listeners, and plenty of baseball nerdery.

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1. Fangraphs Turns 20!

[00:16 – 02:14, 63:47 – 94:41]

Key Discussion Points

• Fangraphs’ Milestone: Meg and Ben open with birthday wishes for Fangraphs, marveling over two decades of baseball analytics.
• Celebratory Site Features: Virtual balloons on the site link readers to classic articles (01:20).
• David Appelman Joins: Founder and CEO discusses the site's origins, evolution, and continued mission.

Notable Quotes

• “Fangraphs is 20, Ben. What an accomplishment.” – Meg Rowley (00:39)
• “FanGraphs was my first child… but the kids are definitely one and one, and then Fangraphs is two.” – David Appelman (63:58)
• “You just kind of keep doing it and then you find out you're there.” – David Appelman on persistence (69:09)
• “I wake up every morning excited…I make sure the stats load.” – David Appelman on still loving his work (69:55)

Highlights with Appelman

• Site Origin Story: Started as a solution to fantasy baseball needs, leveraging his AOL experience (65:16).
• Writing and Stats Relationship: Initially self-written, the site’s popularity soared with additional writers and the launch of WAR (67:19, 69:09).
• Team/Media Buyout Offers: Never a team attempt to “buy” Fangraphs, though some “mildly insulting” offers to acquire the site (72:06, 73:39).
• Growth and Challenges: Discusses subscription versus ad-based funding, the threat of bots, and the difficulty of SEO and discoverability in today's media landscape (79:37, 91:30).

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2. Who Is This Year's Tigers? Surprise Post-Deadline Contenders

[02:14 – 12:52]

Key Discussion Points

• Comparing 2025 Teams to the 2024 Tigers: Discuss which “sellers” (Guardians, Diamondbacks) could make a surprise run like the 2024 Tigers.
• Unpredictability: Despite trades, Guardians and Diamondbacks are surging in the standings (03:50).
• Playoff Projections Skepticism: Meg expresses low confidence in current AL wild card leaders, especially the Yankees (08:06).

Notable Quotes

• “It just goes to show you how unpredictable everything about baseball is.” – Ben Lindbergh (04:41)
• “My confidence in the current cluster of AL wild card teams… it’s low.” – Meg Rowley (08:57)
• “You can't say that it's disrespecting [the Guardians] because... it's math.” – Meg Rowley on playoff odds (11:10)

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3. Are the Dodgers "Breaking Baseball" or Just Good?

[12:52 – 28:31]

Key Discussion Points

• Dodgers Superteam Narrative: Revisiting preseason fears of Dodgers dominance; in reality, they've been successful despite major injuries yet aren’t running away with the division (15:12).
• Depth vs. Spending: Dodgers’ payroll allows them to withstand myriad injuries; some depth homegrown, not just bought (19:13, 19:39).
• Competitive Balance: Meg argues owner frugality, not Dodgers spending, is the bigger threat to MLB parity (25:07).

Notable Quotes

• “Even if a lot has gone wrong for you … you’re still going to be sitting pretty.” – Ben Lindbergh on Dodgers’ luxury (16:19)
• “The reason that I found the whole thing so weird was… it seemed like it was being used as justification for smuggling in all of this stuff that ultimately was going to be to owners' benefit…” – Meg Rowley (27:08)
• “More teams should make it easy on themselves.” – Meg Rowley on small-market team building (25:46)

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4. Baseball Broadcasting: The Streaming Puzzle

[29:28 – 41:36]

Key Discussion Points

• MLB’s Changing Broadcast Partners: With ESPN out, MLB is cobbling together packages with Apple TV+, NBC/Peacock, and others (30:26).
• Fan Access Concerns: Worries about older fans and house “tech support” needing to navigate fragmented streaming platforms (36:42).
• Long-term Risks: Segmented platforms may shrink audience, hinder casual/new fan discovery, and reduce wider cultural engagement (34:12, 39:14).

Notable Quotes

• “This is just like an accelerating trend… you just won’t necessarily know where to find the baseball.” – Ben Lindbergh (35:07)
• “You're introducing work to an experience that I think was pretty easy for people before.” – Meg Rowley (37:34)
• “Poob has it for you. Poob has baseball for you.” – Ben Lindbergh, referencing a viral streaming meme (41:00)

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5. Listener Emails: The Pedantry Parade

[41:39 – 63:47]

Highlights

• Roman Anthony’s OBP Odds ([41:39 – 48:08])
  • Can Boston’s Roman Anthony maintain a .400+ OBP through his contract? Ben and Meg hedge: possible, but the low offensive environment lowers odds.
  • “He’s got about as good a shot as anyone, you know, aside from Soto.” – Ben Lindbergh (47:39)
• Terminology: “Drove in a Run” on a Walk ([49:01 – 53:13])
  • Should “drive in” apply to walks with the bases loaded? Meg finds it linguistically odd; Ben’s fine with it.
  • “So you drove him in by walking…that’s such a ridiculous sentence in any other context.” – Meg Rowley (49:29)
• Walk-off Grand Slam Scoring ([53:19 – 55:10])
  • All four runs count, not just the game-winner, if the home run clears the fence (per listener Justin).
• Juan Soto WAR Trade Math ([55:12 – 60:43])
  • Will Soto out-WAR all players traded for him, just with metrics from their new teams? The field could catch up, but it’s close; forecasts could go either way.
  • “It’s much more certain that Soto’s not going to be adding anything defensively from here on out, probably.” – Ben Lindbergh (60:41)

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6. Fangraphs’ Inside Story with David Appelman

[63:47 – 94:41]

Key Segments & Quotes

• Site Origins & Growth ([65:16 – 69:09])
  • Started as a personal fantasy tool, then added writing/writers when Appelman realized the stats “wouldn’t just speak for themselves”.
  • “With Dave and Jeff and Carson and Eno, I think a lot of the voices of the site became more mainstream.” – Appelman (69:09)
• Being Poached by Teams? ([72:06 – 73:39])
  • No, though he came close with the Yankees in 2006; no serious acquisition offers he’d consider.
• Technical Evolution ([78:16 – 79:37])
  • Accessibility was key to Fangraphs becoming the go-to for advanced stats. Site now fights bots with nearly all web traffic being fake (98% on big days!).
• Data Expansion ([80:48 – 82:48])
  • Added NPB, KBO, and college stats; plans to cover the new Women's Professional Baseball League if possible.
  • “With NPB, there’s just a lot of interest especially in Japan…our traffic from Japan is number two in terms of countries.” – Appelman (81:33)
• Business Model & Modern Challenges ([91:30 – 94:02])
  • FanGraphs never leaned into SEO, sports betting, or “short-term cash grabs,” insulated from some digital media busts. Subscriptions now more vital.
  • “Just when you think you’re kind of in good shape, the ground shifts beneath you.” – Appelman (91:30)
• Camaraderie with Fellow Baseball Sites ([86:07 – 88:50])
  • Early rivalry gave way to mutual survival and respect as media realities changed.
  • “We’ve all carved out our own little spaces…there’s a lot of camaraderie.” – Appelman (88:50)

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Notable “Effectively Wild” Moments

• Dodgers Roster Churn: “There does come a point where…you guys don’t want to try to get guys who don’t get hurt so much?” – Meg Rowley (18:04)

• Streaming Service Satire: “You can poop it, it’s on Poob. Poob has it for you.” – Ben Lindbergh, referencing fake platforms in a meta-moment (41:00)

• Fangraphs Still Runs Lean: “People are often surprised when they send a support email and you answer it. The CEO of the company is answering…” – Meg Rowley (74:52)

• Meta-Podcast Recap: Ohtani headliner frequency plummets in 2025, Asutadillo’s historic 2018, and a factual walk-off scoring debate (94:41).

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Fangraphs 20th Anniversary Banter: 00:16 – 02:14
• Trade Deadline Surprise Teams: 02:14 – 12:52
• Dodgers “Super-Team” Debate: 12:52 – 28:31
• Baseball Broadcast Streaming Puzzle: 29:28 – 41:36
• Listener Email Segment: 41:39 – 63:47
  • Roman Anthony OBP: 41:39 – 48:08
  • “Drive in a run” linguistics: 49:01 – 53:13
  • Scoring on walk-off slams: 53:19 – 55:10
  • Soto WAR trade math: 55:12 – 60:43
• Main Interview with David Appelman: 63:47 – 94:41

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Overall Tone and Style

Conversational, irreverent, and deeply nerdy while remaining accessible. Ben and Meg’s banter is sharp yet affectionate, with Appelman’s naturally low-key delivery delivering insight and dry wit. Dense with detail, heavy on the business, history, and inside baseball workings.

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For the Listener Who Missed the Episode:

This episode is a celebration as much as a deep baseball dive, marked by rich stories on the evolution of both the sport and the data we use to understand it. The interview with Appelman offers a rare, grounded look behind the stats pages everyone uses. Meanwhile, classic Effectively Wild humor surfaces in every segment, whether riffing on fake streaming services or debating the philosophy of RBIs.

Perfect for longtime listeners wanting to feel part of the FanGraphs family, as well as new fans looking for a window into how modern baseball analysis became possible.

Transcript

[Ben Lindbergh]

They'll still be speaking statistically rambling, romantically pontificating, pedantically bantering, bodily drafting, discerningly giggling, giddily, equaling Effectively Wild.

[Meg Rowley]

Hello, and welcome to episode 2362 of Effectively Wild, a Fan Graphs baseball podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Riley, Fancrafts, and I'm joined by Ben Lomberg of the Ringer. Ben, how are you?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. How are you?

[Meg Rowley]

I feel old, but jubilant. So real, you know, push and pull.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Fan graphs. Being 20 means I have to reckon with my own age a little bit. But also, Fangraphs is 20, Ben. What an accomplishment.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Happy birthday, Fangrass. 20 years ago today. It was 20 years ago today. David told the fans to graph away. How's that? What, no Sergeant Peppers? Nothing. Wow.

[Meg Rowley]

I mean, I, I, I don't want to insult the proximity of that to the actual thing, but I didn't get it right away. And I am familiar with that song.

[Ben Lindbergh]

All right, well, just, Just freestyling there.

[Meg Rowley]

It's okay. I mean, I did a. And then I went, shh. And I was like, people will know that I'm throwing confetti in this, like, enactment. I got balloon. We got balloons on the site. Do you see?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I saw that. That's fun. And. Yeah. And they take you to old stories. That's. That's exciting.

[Meg Rowley]

Sean works those up, those balloons.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, David Appleman, who birthed fan graphs 20 years ago today.

[Meg Rowley]

That's right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He will be on this episode to talk to us about that. Doesn't have to make you feel old because you, you haven't been there all 20 years, so you've been there for good portion of them.

[Meg Rowley]

Shockingly long time. Yeah, we were talking about that before we started recording because I was, like, doing the math. I'm like, oh, wow. I'm. It's. I'm not at a decade, but I'm getting, I'm getting up there. You know, my tenure is rapidly expanding. It's crazy. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, Fangraft says enabled effectively Wild to survive for low these many years. So thankful to fangraphs for that and for all the fine reading and all the friends that I've made and who have been gainfully employed there. So we will talk to David about that later in the episode. I thought we could start, well with a bit of banter. And then I mentioned yesterday I had a few leftover emails. Yeah. So it seemed to me that before the trade deadline or immediately after the trade deadline, everyone was trying to identify this year's equivalent of the 2024 Tigers, the team that would sell and then make an improbable run. Of course, the answer was that there wasn't likely to be a 2025 equivalent to the 2024 Tigers. As most people in fairness concluded, the reason that Tigers team was such a big deal was because it was so improbable. Because that doesn't happen often that a team makes a run like that, period. But especially after cutting bait and deciding to subtract from the roster. So there were some candidates out there. Here we are now, a couple weeks past the deadline.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I was looking at the teams with the most wins in August, which more or less maps onto the post deadline period. And of course, so this is through Thursday's games, we're recording on Friday afternoon. So this will inevitably be a bit out of date by the time people hear it. But brewers on top, of course, 12 wins. But then there's a. Yes, bot burgers. There's a, there's a Glenn's Burgers. Glenn's, Bob's Burgers.

[Meg Rowley]

There's a four Bob's Burgers. Burgers.

[Ben Lindbergh]

A four way tie for second most wins since the deadline. Nine wins. And two of the teams are two of the teams that added the most at or around the deadline, the Padres and the Mariners. So, okay, that tracks. The other two with nine wins are ostensibly Sellers, the Guardians and the Diamondbacks. Yeah, the Guardians didn't sell that much. They, they kept Steven Kwan. They held on to some other guys who were potentially on the block, but they traded Shane Bieber and Paul Seawald, two guys who had barely pitched for them this year.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, that's right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Hadn't at all. But still they had potential to pitch for them down the stretch and they said no. And then the Diamondbacks, of course, traded a bunch of guys.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And yet The Diamondbacks are 9 and 4 since the deadline, the Guardians are 9 and 3, which just goes to show you how unpredictable everything about baseball is. And they're within striking distance now. I mean, the, the Guardians as we speak, are half a game out of the third wild card spot, tied in the last column with the Yankees. And then the Diamondbacks are four and a half out of that last wild card spot in the NL behind the Mets, who just cannot win a game to save their lives at this stage. And then the Reds, who are half a game behind the Mets and have Hunter Green back and the Cardinals are in between too. So I guess, you know, they're another obstacle. But the Diamondbacks Seemed like they could be a. A candidate to be this year's Tigers just because they were sort of surprising in their. Not so good before the deadline. They were a disappointing team.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Whereas the Guardians, I guess. Well, it depends. If you look at the projections, maybe they weren't expected to be that great, but we know they're always there regardless of what the projections and the underlying stats say, so. So are you any more confident that either of these teams could be the equivalent that is in the selling camp and then makes a run and makes the playoffs?

[Meg Rowley]

I am not especially, but I wouldn't mind being wrong, if only because, you know, to mix it up a little bit is good. It is a weird thing to root for, though, because, like, I'd be happier about it in the case of the Guardians. And no offense to my Arizona Diamondbacks, I'm just like, racking up teams like nobody's business this week, you know, just adding. Adding rosters here. But part of what made the Tigers run, as fun as it was, was that not only did they get there, but then, you know, they played pretty well in the postseason and they had this funky roster construction that facilitated that, and it was fun. And when you trade your most stable starter and then two of your biggest bats and then your best bullpen arm, I'm skeptical that a Diamondbacks team that gets to the postseason would. Would maybe slot into the entirety of the role. Right. Which isn't to say that they don't have good players like, you know, give me Corbin and Catal and Geraldo on the. On the biggest stage. That'd be great. And, you know, Gabriel Moreno's coming back. Theoretically. But I have watched some Diamondbacks baseball post deadline. That bullpen was not good before the deadline. And now that bullpen lacks Shelby Miller and is more terrifying than it was now. They got, you know, some of their trades brought back players who are either big league ready or near big league ready. So it's not like there's no one that they can slot in to try to work something out. But it's not a team that I would, like, feel confident would even get out of a wild card race. Now. I didn't expect them to make a World Series run when they did in 23, so what do I know about anything? But I'm a little. I'm a little antsy about that piece. Whereas I think the. The Guardians are a more complete team, which isn't to say that they're not without flaws. There's a reason they're not first in that Division. But I would maybe feel a little bit better about it if I were, if I were gearing up to watch that team actually play. October baseball. October baseball, mostly in September 30th. October baseball, overwhelmingly October baseball. Baseball. I'll say this though, my confidence in the current cluster of AL wild card teams, it's low. I mean, even the Mariners is, it's better, kind of. But I, I mean, the Red Sox, okay, but those Yankees, it still doesn't feel good. Those Yankees, you know, the, those Yankees, they're still not feeling good. Which is funny because like they, you know, if you're looking at it from like a run differential perspective, you're like, oh, you should have more confidence than them, than the Mariners. But here's the thing. I don't. Because I want the Mariners to win and I am indifferent at best toward the Yankees. So sometimes one's feelings grab a hold of one's brain.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. Well, the Mariners have multiple paths to the playoffs, which.

[Meg Rowley]

Multiple paths. What is it?

[Ben Lindbergh]

They are. Yes, they could easily or not easily, but very conceivably claim the AL west title. So they've, they've got a backup plan. And really the, the Guardians, they're six and a half games pack of the Tigers and probably not going to catch them though they have what, more than halved, I guess the biggest deficit that they had in that division because they've been playing well. And the Tigers not so hot for the most part lately. So that would be quite an incredible comeback and, and also quite an incredible back to back sequence if the Tigers somehow blew the AL Central lead and had a collapse, mirror image of what happened last year. I'm not, not wishing that upon you Tigers fans. I'm just saying that it'd be a great story, be tremendous content. I don't think that's going to happen. But, but you know, the playoff odds at FanGraphs right now have the Guardians at about a 30% chance to make it, even though the playoff odds still do not respect Cleveland very much as a team.

[Meg Rowley]

And don't like, don't like, give it a motivation. Okay. It's not, it's not respecting or disrespecting. It's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, it's just a cold hearted appraisal.

[Meg Rowley]

It's just, I'm just saying.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's, there's no, no axe to grind. Just running the numbers here and the numbers say that the rest of season winning percentage is.478. This is not so great. But nonetheless, still a 30% chance because they're so close.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And because, you know, other than, I guess, the Rangers and the Royals, who were still hanging around a few games back. Yeah, so. So the Guardians obviously have a better shot of pulling this off. And they sold and subtracted less aggressively than the Diamondbacks did. So it would be less exciting or improbable if that happens. Probably.

[Meg Rowley]

I'm just saying. You can't say that it's disrespecting because, look, it doesn't have motivations. It's math. Just looking at the. It's just looking at those rosters. You know, it's just looking at those rosters. It's simming out the sear the season. It's just doing. It's just doing what it does. But you know, who does have, you know, who does have an axe grind, or at least did. I don't know if it's the same people, the people who run the Guardian social media really do not care for our playoff odds, or at least they have not historically. And it becomes a whole kerfuffle. And I. I haven't seen that kerfuffle because if it's happen, which I don't know that it is, maybe they've mellowed. It's happening over on Twitter, and I'm not looking over there, but I'm just saying in the past, they have gotten big mad about the playoff odds. Big, big mad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's. It's a good thing to use to drum up support among your fan base, I suppose. Exactly. Bulletin board. It's. They didn't respect us. Nobody believed in us.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And here we are. It's us against the world. It's us against fan graphs. And yeah, it's a good way to pander to your audience, probably. So I understand it. I won't say I respect it, but I guess I get it.

[Meg Rowley]

It's mostly just very funny. We can move on from this because it's not particularly interesting radio, and I acknowledge that. But it is just funny because it's like if you were making a list of teams that even in this era where every team is an analytical team to some degree, I would venture that you would probably still have Cleveland relatively high on that list in terms of most or least analytical. And so it's like, go. Your front office is not. I'm telling you that anyway. It's just a funny. It's a funny thing. It's a haha funny thing. Funny thing.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. It's two different audiences, really. Your front office and your fan base. So sometimes the twain shall meet. But not often. Okay, so we'll see if either of those can pull this off. Most likely not, but it's something to monitor and they at least made it more interesting in the past couple weeks. As we are on the eve recording here on the eve of the Dodgers Padres weekend series, I was thinking, yeah, I'm excited. This is, me too. This is fun. About as exciting as a series in mid August can get. And you know, especially the stakes are, are high in a sense. They're also not very high in a sense because both of these teams are playoff locks essentially, but the division title is at stake and that that's meaningful in terms of World Series ads and also just bragging rights and everything. But, but I was thinking of this because you know how you have had a few asides lately about how the Dodgers have not actually turned out to be a super team and the preseason projections, fears, hype about how they were just going to blow everyone out of the water and spend their way to a title, et cetera, have turned out not to be true because here they are still here they are fighting for their lives in the NL West. But I guess the, the alternate way to interpret that is that okay? Yes, certainly they are not just cruising, sailing to a title. They're not a super team. They're not setting any records here. However, they are still all but assured of making the playoffs even though a lot has gone wrong for them, even though they have collectively amassed the most days and games missed to injury of any team in the majors. And even some of the guys who haven't missed a ton of time haven't played like their best selves when they have been on the field. And so, you know, Mookie hasn't hit like himself until very recently and Michael Conforto has been bad and, and we could run down the list. It's, you know, mostly guys who just haven't been there and getting nothing out of Roki Sasaki, et cetera. Right. So this is like, I don't know if it's worst case scenario, but it's, it's a low percentile outcome probably for this Dodgers team. And yet here they stand, probably still going to win this division. Odds are, and even if they don't win the division, they're still going to make the playoffs. So it's like the downside for the Dodgers, just about the worst case scenario is they still probably comfortably make the playoffs. And I would say if, if we were to attribute good faith to arguments to the people who were really up in arms about what the Dodgers did this past offseason. It wouldn't just be that, okay, they're gonna crush everyone and win 120 games or something, but also just, like, there's no real risk for them because they've created this buffer for themselves where they could lose an entire rotation of top starters, and then they have sort of like a second backup rotation that's there that can get them through. And who knows how much. I know that people around the Dodgers will say, oh, it's just like, they know from the start that they don't really need to put the pedal to the metal. And their season doesn't start until October, I guess, unless they actually are a wild card team. And then maybe It'll start in September 30th. I forget when that would start, but. But that idea.

[Meg Rowley]

It would start the 30th.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, that idea that, like, there's no motivation. Like, I was. When I was watching a Dodgers game the other day, someone on the broadcast said, like, this is actually good for them, that the race is so close, that they have these meaningful games against the Padres in August to kind of keep them tuned up, you know, which I'm skeptical. Like, yeah, there's been this. This long standing debate about does it matter if you're, like, winning by a lot or you actually have to, like, really eek it out and play meaningful games? And does it matter if you enter the playoffs hot or cold? And mostly it's seems like it just doesn't matter that much. And the season just sort of resets, for all intents and purposes, when you get to the playoffs. But point is, like, this is the downside for them. If. If most teams suffered the same sort of misfortune or, you know, injury absences that the Dodgers have, well, they would be the Braves, let's say, or they'd be some other. They'd be the Diamondbacks. Right. Like, they'd be out of it. And so the Dodgers being able to spend as much as they do, and not just the spending, but the way that they attract players for other reasons, other institutional advantages that they have, some given, some earned, basically puts them in this position where there's almost no downside risk for them, and very few teams are in that position. So what would you say to that? That this is not necessarily a refutation of the Dodgers are breaking baseball, but kind of a confirmation, a validation of an aspect of that, I guess.

[Meg Rowley]

But that wasn't the accusation. Right. The accusation in the off season was that they were buying a World Series Right. That was the thing that people were the most worked up about. Right. That their ability to outspend to this degree, pretty much everyone but the Mets put them in a spot where they were. They were just going to buy a repeat of their. Their championship from last year. And I think that was what I took the most exception to because I don't think you can effectively do that in baseball. Now, that doesn't mean that it isn't a bummer for fans of other teams to see what they understand to be the best players going to the Dodgers, because clearly you want the best guys on your team. But I just was not moved by the notion that they were going to be able to effectively buy a, A championship for the, for the reasons that we've talked about. Right. They have been wildly injured. Aren't they always? You know, they're like, there does come a point where. And I, I have a ton of respect for the people who work for that team. I think they're good at what they do. There does come a point where I'm like, you guys don't want to try to, like, get guys who don't get hurt so much, like, especially on the pitching side. Like, is there. I don't want to call it a problem, but it's like, perhaps there needs to be a shift in focus from an evaluation perspective, because, boy, do you sure get a lot of these guys.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You know, And Andrew Friedman did say, like, oh, we're going to look at our process and see what that was last offseason, and nothing has changed. But. But you could also say, I guess, that they have the capacity to sign a bunch of injury starters because of the payroll, because they could have 12 starters or whatever. And so if seven of them break, then. Then they'll still be okay, whereas other teams don't necessarily have the luxury of doing that.

[Meg Rowley]

Right. And I think that there is, like, despite the fact that I think, again, we could ask some questions about, like, are you, you know, is. Is there a rebalancing that needs to happen here in terms of your risk tolerance around injury? I think the place where they did really press their advantage is not even necessarily in the highest profile guys that they got, although those guys did have, you know, played well for them when they've played, but also that they had all of this depth, right. And that well positioned to weather that. And some of that depth, I think, you know, you can. You could accurately say, like, they signed externally and brought in, but some of that depth was just like, actually homegrown guys. You know, particularly on the pitching side. So my frustration was that the idea that the Dodgers were going to just be able to buy a championship team, what's the point of even playing the season? It's just going to be the Dodgers. And that was being used not by you, Ben, you're a perfect angel, but by some to say we need to rethink the way that we do free agency or we need to rethink the way that we conceive of the luxury tax thresholds or even entertain a salary cap, because surely this presents this, you know, just like unconquerable force and like what it has really produced as a team that is going to probably have a win total in the 90s. And I think the funny thing about all of that, that off season consternation was that when, when everybody's preseason projections came out, it wasn't like the Dodgers were, were projected to be 110 win team. They were projected to be a team with a win total in the mid-90s, which is a good baseball team. And a. Of the, of the projections we had this year, certainly one of the better ones. I think them and the Braves were the only teams that crested 90 wins, maybe, but it wasn't like they were forecast to be the 2001 Mariners. And by the way, they didn't win the World Series.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, no, it's true. Yeah, Fangraphs had them at 97 wins preseason and they're on a 91 win pace right now, which, yeah, it's not that far off really. Baseball Prospectus did have them higher. I forget what the exact number was, but I believe they had the highest win total projection from Pakota of any team in like 20 years. So that was, that was higher, but.

[Meg Rowley]

So that was Craig putting his thumb on the scale.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, that was Craig's fault, I guess.

[Meg Rowley]

And Craig, I know you did not do that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's famously just so optimistic about the Dodgers at all times that not crashing out couldn't every moment of every day flaws. No. So, yeah. So relative to the, the Fangrass projection, I think that was, was a good call, I guess. So we could say it seems to. But yeah, the idea that you can buy a championship, that's just always going to be wrong because of the structure of the sport. And that's, you know, maybe that's not so satisfying just to say, well, there's a certain amount of randomness built into baseball, into all of these playoff rounds and everything. And so even if you are a super team, the field is still going to be favored over you. That, that's just inherent. That can't really be changed. And the Dodgers themselves were a good example of that for years as they failed to win a championship. But what you can say is that you can buy a ticket to the playoffs at least. You can not buy a championship, but you can buy yourself some real certainty in terms of getting there. Sure. And even if a lot goes wrong for you along the way, then you're still going to be sitting pretty. Whereas most other teams, they can't have as many things go wrong for them and still count on having a shot at the championship. So that much I think is, is fair. But you're right that that was not the, the only critique or even necessarily the loudest one.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. And I, I think that like having an eye on the general competitive balance of the league is like a, an important, it's important to do right. Because you do want more teams to be in a position where they can credibly compete for a playoff spot. And I think that, you know, the Dodgers are in a spot where they flex their muscle, right. They use their financial might to paper over injury issues, even though some of the money they're using to paper over the injury issues, like they're getting paper cuts the guys who they bring in. And so then it's like, oh boy, now I got an injury. Right. Like, you know, how many innings has Blake Snell thrown for the Dodgers this year? Right. So there's, there's some of that to kind of cloud the picture, but they absolutely utilize the resources that they have at their disposal. And one of those resources, namely the amount of money that they are able to spend on their club, outstrips the vast majority of teams in baseball. But as we talked about during the off season, I think that there is a much the more pressing threat to competitive balance in the league is not the Dodgers going all out. It's teams nutting. Right? It's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yep.

[Meg Rowley]

If this is your very first episode, I am so sorry. This is a disgusting way to refer to Bob nutting that we have come up with. Right. So it's like that is a much to my mind, bigger threat. And I think that it's so interesting to look at the way that the playoff field has, has shaken out in the last little bit. And obviously we have ways to go. And I'm not saying that like every team is playing precisely to their base runs expectation right now, but like what would you say one of the better teams in baseball is right now? What's the team that Says getting their fan free burgers.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

The Milwaukee brewers. What's their payroll look like? Right. So it's not that it's not possible for you to play good baseball with much more significantly constrained payroll than the Dodgers do. You just have to be good at the other stuff. And, and as we've talked about, like you, you narrow your margin for error considerably when you are reliant on that other stuff. Being able to paper over injury with money tremendously helpful. Right. Like there's a reason that they are one of the best teams in baseball and one of the teams that is considered like the class of the sport. But it's not impossible to do it a different way. It's just harder. Right. So I agree, like more teams should make it easy on themselves. And some of this is like, you know, you talked a little bit. You hinted at this, like structural advantages that are going to be, you know, aren't necessarily going to be present in every year. Like if, if Roki Sasaki just wants to be a Dodger and he's willing to not wait until he's like a true free agent to do it, well, what do you do with that? Like there's, you know, that's suggestive of personal preferences that aren't necessarily counterable with money. Right. Like if Yamamoto just wants to be a Dodger because he grew up a Dodgers fan, like what are you going to do? But that's not going to be true of every guy, right? So I, I just. The reason that I found the whole thing so weird was that it, it seemed like it was being used as justification for smuggling in all of this stuff that ultimately was going to be to owners benefit and result in less money spent on players to address a non problem. Right. You can't buy a championship. You can construct teams that are good and do it a different way. The Diamondbacks were in the world series in 2023 as a wild card team, right? And it's not like there's no talent on club and they, you know, they've spent money since then, worked out for them, but like, you know, like we're freaking out because a while and a wild guard, he was in the postseason in the World Series two years ago. And when that happened, everyone was like, this is boring. No one cares about the Diamondbacks. I'm like, maybe the bigger problem is that we are incapable of being happy, you know, and that's like a. That's an us failing, you know, or not a failing necessarily, but like the an us problem. Right. That's A. That's a project we need to work on with people who aren't, like, front office personnel. So I just found the whole thing to be kind of disingenuous. And mostly I wish that people had just been, like, honest about their feelings, which is, I don't root for the Dodgers and I'm worried that my team isn't going to be able to compete with them. And that feels bad. And it's like, okay, that's totally valid. And I would like to remind people that I encourage everyone to hate the Dodgers.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Meg Rowley]

And the only reason that I'm still on this horse, because I don't. Normally, I don't even remember what I say on the podcast half the time, let alone dwell on being right about stuff. But, like, people were so nasty in our emails for, like, weeks. And it was personal and it was so intense and it was so bizarre. And so I am going to be on this horse, even though the people sent those emails are undoubtedly no longer.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Listening to the podcast.

[Meg Rowley]

Because I was a little. I was a little shirty in my responses to them. I was. I felt entitled to that. I thought I was justified in my being like, hey now, hey now. I'm going to throw a sandwich to you. Something I don't know. It'll have tuna, so it'll smell bad and it'll spread everywhere. We drink two Friday shows this week. We did a Friday show on Thursday and we're doing a Friday show today. I'm working on my tight 10.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, we're not actually recording both on Friday. That's impossible because we released one too early on Friday for that to have been the case. But we were just in a Friday frame of mind.

[Meg Rowley]

We were in a Friday. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Anyway, I hope that the Padres Dodgers series is exciting and well played and spicy, and perhaps we will return to talk about it next week. Last little bit of news here. So Rob Manfred, in addition to seeming to intimate that there would be a Twins sale, also intimated that the rights issues would be cleared up by the All Star break, that the deals would be done. That didn't turn out to be the case, but he and MLB still working on it.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. In Rob's defense, and I don't say that very often, he explicitly said in the course of that BVWA meeting that he was not going to put another estimated deadline on it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And he was.

[Meg Rowley]

He was like, I'm going to do the last one, so I'm not. That's not a direct quote, but it was something to that effect. So I'M not going to do it again. So I do want to. In his defense, he said, I'm, I don't know, but I, I think it'll happen soon is what I recall him saying at that meeting.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So usually better not to predict things I found. But there is some reporting from Andrew Marchand at the Athletic, which makes it sound like things are developing and the negotiations are ongoing with a whole bunch of outlets here. Netflix, espn, NBC and Apple, they're all in the mix. And it's not seemingly going to be a winner take all situation where one of these, one of these companies just snaps up all of the rights that ESPN opted out of, but it's going to be divvied up and spread out. And so the top contenders for Sunday Night baseball and first round playoff games appear to be Apple TV plus and NBC, which in this case really means Peacock. And then ESPN is, is still involved for a smaller part of the package, maybe for weekday games and a bigger daily digital presence, whatever that means. And then Netflix is, is interested in the Home Run Derby specifically, which is kind of in keeping with Netflix wanting live events, buzzy events also.

[Meg Rowley]

Like, what a weird thing to specifically be like. No, we just want the Derby though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's it. That's the only interesting baseball thing. So, so we had a situation where baseball was in bed with ESPN and ESPN had Saturday Night Baseball and then a bunch of first round playoff games and other things and the Derby and everything. And now it's, it's just going to be a piecemeal situation. And I guess the plan is hopefully that the revenue will be made up. So yeah, ESPN was paying $550 million a year on average, though that was like over the whole span of the deal. So it, it would have been a little higher than that for the remaining three seasons that they opted out of. And so by divvying it up and all this different inventory, they're trying to reach the amount that was going to be owed to mlb. And this is, I guess, the way that things work now. This is just the reality of broadcasting in 2025 and streaming and it's not unique to MLB, but it really, it does erect an impediment to, to access because yeah, it's not a big deal to me because I have like access to just about every streaming service, all the major ones, at least like between several.

[Meg Rowley]

I have not heard of.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, my personal access and shared access with family and work stuff like you can put it on any of these streaming services and I can find it so it's not a big deal. I just have to. It adds the extra hassle of having to look up which app I'm opening. But, you know, that's not that big a deal for me. But for other people, a, you have the segment of the audience that just still is not accustomed to streaming stuff and just will not know how to operate these things and will not know where to find them, even if they can't afford them. And then you have the part of the audience that can't afford to have a zillion different things. Right. And I know, you know, it's not like having cable was super cheap either to access previously. And so we've, we've unbundled the cable package and now we're rebundling. As you know, everything kind of gets glommed together. Or you just have to sign up for eight different things. And this is not great when it comes to, you know, it might be fine for, for revenue, at least in the short term, and the owners can make their money and I guess by extension, in theory, maybe the players potentially. But long term, it's not ideal because you're just segmenting the season and you're segmenting the audience. And we've talked about this before, but this is just like an accelerating trend really. So even if ESPN was sort of a shrinking platform, as Manfred said, well, I guess what platform isn't shrinking these days, right? I mean, they're all kind of the pieces of the pie just get smaller gradually because there are just so many different channels and services and outlets and everything. But also, you just won't necessarily know where to find the baseball, even harder to find the baseball than it has been to this point. And then what effect does that have long term if you're not just reaching people, sort of passive viewers who just had a thing on and they were watching something else and then baseball came on and, oh, this is interesting. I'll keep watching. You're just, you're not getting that sort of discovery. And so in the long run, maybe that costs you because your fan base shrinks and you can command smaller audiences and thus smaller payouts. And maybe this is just the way of things. I'm not saying that there's necessarily a better option for MLB here. Like ESPN opted out of the deal. So MLB is just trying to find the next best option, basically. But it's not going to be as good, even if the money ends up being similar.

[Meg Rowley]

Did ESPN opt out of the deal?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, yeah. And. And MLB then subsequently said like, well, we Weren't happy with the deal either.

[Meg Rowley]

Right. Okay. That's what I'm thinking of.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And you know, that was probably partly face saving and probably partly also genuine discontented me.

[Meg Rowley]

I quit.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right. Yeah. And. And ESPN clearly deprioritizing mlb. And so I'm sure MLB legitimately had some gripes there, but would it have opted out unilaterally? I kind of doubt it. Because of all this hassle of trying to piece together the same revenue from. From places with smaller reaches.

[Meg Rowley]

I'm mindful of the part of it that isn't their fault. But. And, and you're right. Like, I don't want to take for granted that there's, like, a better consolidated option for them on the table that they're, like, stubbornly ignoring. I will say that it is the behavior of a man who is not going to have to field phone calls about how to find his baseball from people over the age of 50. And I have respect for those folks, but, like, I have to help.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He might get some. Some emails to Rob Manfred's email account, which will send him stuff. I'm sure he'll get through.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, it's like, hey, you know, some of us are the go to. How do I log into this person? And then how many times do we have to field that call? You know, so a lot of times potentially. Although, you know, joke's on me, because sometimes I have to call my dad and be like, how do I find this thing? Because he works in tech and he knows how to do it and I don't. So, you know, it isn't always a clean generational split. But I do worry about it. I worry about people being able to watch the games they want. I worry particularly when it pertains to the post season, which is like this very special time of year where we're all watching the same stuff, even if that experience is mediated through social media and you're not always in the same place. Like, the conversation, at least in the coverage, is all kind of the same. Right. We're all reacting to the same games. We're thinking about the same kinds of questions. And I think that as you have fracture across platforms like this, the odds of us maintaining that sense, kind of, they. They dim some. And I do think that people, you know, people like baseball and they want to watch postseason baseball. And I do think that consumers are getting savvier about how to navigate this stuff. Right? Like, I'll sign up for a month and then I'll cancel and. But it's. It's Work, you know, you're introducing work to an experience that I think was pretty easy for people before. Now, a lot of these streaming platforms are set up such that like, if you do just have linear cable, you can use your linear cable login to like access stuff on them. So maybe some people will just figure out how to do it and then it'll be fine. But yeah, like Peacock, like, I mean, some of these, again, like you. A lot of these I already subscribe to. Or I'll be fine to like sub for a month and then cancel. Although I continue to think that you're making up platforms sometimes when just seeing if you can slip them past me.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, there is a. There's a viral tweet about that, right? About. Oh yeah, made up fabricated streaming services. And no, I have not done that. But it's true. I'm an Apple TV plus devotee, so you can put baseball in there, that's fine. The picture quality of it is. Is always nice, but sometimes alarmingly nice.

[Meg Rowley]

Like kind of clear in a way that's like uncanny.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I know, but. But it's been an issue for other leagues, other sports, like MLS goes exclusive behind the Apple TV plus paywall, and then they get a big payout. They got a lot of revenue. But then there's discontent about that because people aren't coming across. It basically just it limits you to what your existing audience is because not that many people are going to find you otherwise. And you're not getting promoted on other major media outlets because they have no incentive to, because they're not rights holders anymore and the product is on some other service. And so why are they going to give you free publicity basically? And so you just kind of lock yourself into either a static or dwindling audience and then that's maybe bad for the long term health of your sport. So yeah, it's not ideal, but maybe, maybe that's just the world we're in and maybe there's some way out of it if Manfred is able to package together enough local rights to make it a lump thing. But then again, if it's like a lump thing where one streaming service. It's like, watch the entire MLB season on Peacock. It's like, how many people are actually going to do that?

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, how many people are signing up for the lump? I hope he calls it something else. I don't know. That's very appealing, you know, Ah, I'm.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Watching Twisted Metal on Peacock. So there's that.

[Meg Rowley]

You're making that up. It's not. That's not a real.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

I thought that you were gonna say earlier in this conversation that last time all I wanted to talk about was the Gilded Age. And guess what? Still do. Still would prefer to be talking about the Gilded Age. Not because baseball's bad, but just because it's in my brain, man.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Thinking about it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. I think the original version of that meme, I forget whether it was Tumblr or Twitter or copy pasta from somewhere. I don't know. But it was like, have you seen the new show? It's on Tubu. It's literally on Heebie. It's on Pootie with ads. It's literally on Dippy. You can probably find it on we know, dude. It's on Gumpy. It's a Fibo original. It's on Poob. You could watch it on Poob. You can go to Poob and watch it. Log into Poob right now. Go to Poob. Dive into Poob. You can poop it. It's on Poob. Poob has it for you. Poop has it for you.

[Meg Rowley]

Dive into poop.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't even remember if that was the original version, but you get the point.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, dive into lump.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right? So the leftover emails, just three. Here's one from Matt Patreon supporter who says we may be seeing something unprecedented with Roman Anthony last night. This was a few nights ago, he became by far the youngest post integration player to walk four times in homer in the same game. The sample is still tiny, but the on base numbers are quickly becoming Soto esque. I know predictions aren't an effectively wild favorite, but if you had to put a percentage on the chances he finishes his current contract with an on base percentage over.400, what would it be? As a 20 something who grew up idolizing Mike Trout, I can't help but approach long term projections with some healthy skepticism. But Roman just profiles so ridiculously well and the contract will presumably not include any of his decline years. Soto, Judge and Trout are the only active players who meet this threshold. So yeah, it's true. It doesn't take him that deep into his career because he is so young. He's 21. He's a fairly young 21. So this isn't even decline phase. So we're just saying like will peak Roman Anthony basically and whatever he's now, if he is not yet peak Roman Anthony, will he have a.400 plus on base percentage? It's. It's certainly not far fetched.

[Meg Rowley]

No, I mean I think that the Thing that is working against him potentially is just that we don't have, I mean we have minor league translations. We just haven't seen him in the majors very much. But like he's put together. Well, he, you know, there have been times in his career as a minor leaguer where he was like discerning to the point of people worrying that he was passive at the plate. But he has a good eye, he's not swinging at junk. And yeah, he's, he's young. He's young enough that like even if he loses some time to injury, he's probably still going to be mostly in his prime for the duration of the contract. I don't know how I would ballpark it specifically, but seems possible to me. It does not seem ridiculous to assert that. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. He's at a.399 on base percentage now in his rookie season at 21. And he has a track record of, of doing this basically at every level. Like this was the kind of player he was and obviously it wasn't just like scouting the stat line. He was the top prospect in baseball certainly. So you know, scouts agreed as well. Like when the, when he has a track record of doing it, being young for his level everywhere he goes.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And scouts agree that the pedigree is there and now the Red Sox have committed to him long term and he's in a decent park for hitters and all the rest of it then. Yeah. I mean the thing that I guess goes against him is just the environment in baseball right now and the fact that 400 on base guys are pretty few and far between in this era. So when the league on base percentage is as low it is as it is because the batting average is as low as it is. And so.316 MLB average op right now. Well that's, it's, it's tough. Like how many. In fact the only qualified hitters now who have a.400 plus on base percentage are Will Smith and Aaron Judge.

[Meg Rowley]

Wow.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Even, even Juan Soto doesn't because of his slow start. So that's the reason why it's hard. It's not like I have any lack of faith in him, but it's just. We don't know it's challenging.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. We don't know which way the league wide stats are going to go. For all we know it's going to dip lower I guess. Guess I'd bet on it rebounding just because it's, it's near historical lows batting average for Instance, and so you might bet on a bounce back or you bet on MLB putting its thumb on the scale and engineering a bounce back of some sort. So you could, I guess you could project or forecast that at some point in the life of this contract the offensive environment will recover somewhat.

[Meg Rowley]

Sure.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Scoring will rise and on base percentages will rise and maybe even, maybe ABS helps a little bit or you go to full, full robo umps at some point and maybe that helps even more. Who knows. So.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I don't know. I guess if it's something that only 2 of 162 qualified hitters are doing.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

This season. And you're asking the odds of him doing it over several seasons. I guess it's. The odds are against it, I guess. Yeah. But I don't know, I guess I might put them, put them pretty high. I don't know, 25%. I don't know. You take the over or the under on that? I'm not sure.

[Meg Rowley]

I take this. I guess I feel compelled to take the slight under, but I don't know how much conviction in that selection I really have, you know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Now he does have a.387 Babip currently.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Although he was a pretty high Babip guy throughout the Miners as well. And, and his weighted on base is basically the same as is expected. Waited on base and he's in Fenway and everything. So like, you know, maybe he'll just be a high bab guy which will help him. And he is walking a lot. Of course he's also, he's struck out more than you'd like. I mean he has a 26% strikeout rate with four homers and a 161 ISO. So he hasn't had much over the fence power on the whole. He's got some doubles. It's Fenway. But yeah, like, you know, if he gets the strikeout rate down and his, his chase rate has declined as the season has gone on, which seems like a good sign that he's maybe already acclimating, adjusting, improving. So yeah, he's, he's got about as good a shot as, as anyone, you know, aside from Soto. I mean, I understand the Soto comparisons. Of course. Soto was, was doing that at like 19.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So he was even more precocious and, and a prodigy. I mean he had a 406 on base in 2018 as a rookie in almost 500 plate appearances, age 19. So yeah, he was, he was really something and still. Yes, but he is, he has never failed to have a 400 plus on base in a full season. And I, I would expect that he might end up again over there by the time it's all said and done, even though he's only got six weeks or so left.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, I think that's right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Roman Anthony, really good player. Really good process. Yeah. Breaking news here. Okay. All right. Greg says, I'm watching the Dodgers play the Angels. Andy Pajes drew a bases loaded walk to tie the game. And Eric Caros said, and Pajes drives in a run with a walk. Hmm. I would accept walked in a run, but drive is a bit too far for me. What say you? An extreme baseball pedant. Not us, of course, might take issue with the fact they're credited with a run batted in now as a stat to record that they caused a run to score. Fine. But a batsman who walked was rewarded specifically for not using his bat. This second one doesn't really bother me much, but perhaps there's a term out there that is more accurate than run batted in, such as run driven in, perhaps, which was the first question. Right.

[Meg Rowley]

This is the tricky part of it. I, I agree that driven in, in that context seems wrong to me because, like, you hit a. Like it's a deep drive, you know, like you're not. Yeah, but you're right. Driven in.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't mind it. You. You caused it to be driven in.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, but you didn't.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You didn't drive a ball.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But you still drove that runner home by walking because you walked it.

[Meg Rowley]

That's such a ridiculous sentence in any other context. So you drove him in by walking.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I, I'm okay with it.

[Meg Rowley]

Because. Scootered him in. We biked him in.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You were rewarded for not using your bat, I guess, in a way, but you had to have a bat up there or else they probably.

[Meg Rowley]

You wouldn't have driven. You wouldn't, you wouldn't have gotten a walk if you didn't have a bat up there. They'd be like, no, I know there's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The, the John Boyce hypothetical about what if Barry Bonds didn't even have a bat? Like, what? But even if Barry Bonds didn't have a bat, then I think they probably would have thrown more pitches in the strike zone and he would not have walked nearly as much. So he had to at least stand up there with the bat with the implied threat that he could swing. And then, yes, of course, it is then having the judgment not to swing at pitches outside the strike zone that enables you to walk. But. But isn't this just going along with the historical bias against the idea that. That drawing walks is a skill. And. And so we're. We're making it lesser somehow because we're saying that you can't use the same terminology as if it's just that the.

[Meg Rowley]

Terminology means a different thing. You know, it just means a different thing. I. We can. We can glorify the walk. We can respect the walk, but we don't need to have confusion. It inspires confusion to say you drove it in. I just. I get. I don't think that it's, like, technically wrong, but it's just not. When we use that terminology. We use that terminology to imply what a guy is doing with his bat to the ball more.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Than. Right. Like a line drive.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Like a deep drive.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's like a different usage of drive, sort of. It's like, you know, I. I drove you to do something. He was driven mad. Like, you know.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, you can.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You can be prompted to. To have something happen without literally, like, driving a car or driving a ball with your bat or, you know, there are different contexts in which drive makes some sense. So I. I'm actually. I'm fine with this. I. I'm actually okay with this. He did. He drove in a run because he. He went to first base, and thus the bases were loaded and the runners had to move, and. And so his walk drove in the run. I'm okay with that. I'm even okay with saying the run batted in because he was a batter. He was batting.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, he was.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He was at bat.

[Meg Rowley]

I was stressed about that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Granted, it's not an at bat. It's a plate appearance, which I have been pedantic about, and I'm a stickler for that one. But. But you're still a batter. You're batting, even if you. You don't use your bat ultimately, in the. The action pitch, the outcome pitch there. So, yeah, I'm okay with not only giving you an rbi, but saying that it was a run batted in. And I'm also, I think, more comfortable than you are with. With saying driving in the run.

[Meg Rowley]

I don't like that. I don't like driving in.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. All right. What. Is there something that you would prefer to say? Because. Because you can say drew a walk, but you probably wouldn't say he drew in a run.

[David Appleman]

Right.

[Meg Rowley]

So he walked it. Well, yeah, the pitcher walked in the run. I. I don't know what I would say.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He forced in a run. I mean. Yeah, that sounds more kind of like the pitcher is Doing it than the batter to me. But yeah, I don't know.

[Meg Rowley]

I'd say he, he drew a walk.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And a run scored subsequently.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, that's what I'd say.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He went to first and the other guy ran home from third.

[Meg Rowley]

He drew, wouldn't you say? He drew. Bases loaded walk. When you do that way, and then it implies the run scores.

[Ben Lindbergh]

A run scoring walk, a run scoring.

[Meg Rowley]

Walk, all kinds of things. And you notice how we didn't use the word drive at all even one time.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, we just got a, just got an email in response to the pedantic question about when run score. Exactly. And Justin says, with regard to the question of if a game is technically tied when someone hits a go ahead grand slam, I have definitive proof that all the runs are acknowledged at once. If you are batting down one in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and you hit an over the wall grand slam, this is, this is beautiful. Your team does not walk off as soon as the go ahead runner, the one who had been on second, touches home. Instead, the final score reflects that you have won the game by three runs. I think in light of this, you can't say that the game was tied. In the hypothetical positive, I think that that's right.

[Meg Rowley]

I will say I, in, in fairness, like there, there are particular rules here and they are a little bit goofy because let's say that you, you got, you got guys on base. Multiple guys on base.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

It's the bottom of the ninth and you hit a double, they stop counting. As soon as the winning run crosses the plate, they stop counting. They don't let everybody keep playing the, they just stop. But with a home run, they all score.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

And so like, it's like, well, we can kind of arrest the play mid go in particular circumstances, which is, you know, you've, you've scored enough runs to have won the game. And so we are done now. So I have to acknowledge that as.

[Ben Lindbergh]

A weird, weird rule. Weird, weird little inconsistency, which I think we've talked about before. But yeah, no, I'm sticking to my guns on this one. I just don't think you can get to a score without having passed every intermediate score, however briefly. I think you have to count sequentially. It's, it's linear, it's not a lump sum. But, but ultimately I think we more or less agreed.

[Meg Rowley]

Just.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Okay. All right. And last question. This is actually Soto related. And this is from Robert, who says, I'm curious, if once Soto calls his career over, will his Total war be more than all the guys traded for him put together. Only the direct guys, not the next tier down. Like if Mackenzie Gore gets traded and whoever his team Washington gets back. Not those guys. So not like the Juan Soto trade tree, just all the proceeds down the ages.

[Meg Rowley]

The guys he was directly traded for.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, involved in the same transaction. So we're counting only those guys. But he has been in multiple trades, so it's still a fair amount of guys. Right, so it's just the guys. Baseball reference lists as Robert says. Harleen Susanna, C.J. abrams, MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell III, Luke Voight, James Woods. No, not James Woods. He wrote James Wood. It's J. He wrote Woods. It's Wood. I ran right into it. James Wood.

[Meg Rowley]

And then you drove it in.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Johnny Brito, Kyle Gashioka, Michael King, Drew Thorpe and Randy Vasquez. Soto will DH at some point and it's not like his defense helps him anyway with war.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, that's particularly this year, really bad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, it's been rough. That's the ongoing saga of Juan Soto's defensive stats, which maybe, maybe they've ended up on one side of the ledger lately. But for a while there it was really ping ponging back and forth. I started thinking, that's a lot of guys. Can one guy outwar that many? Well, maybe just look at the WAR accumulated while on the specific team they were sent to.

[Meg Rowley]

Oh, so that makes it more feasible in my opinion.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. So. So CJ. So 01 war with San Diego. That wouldn't count toward his total because only the WAR accumulated while with Washington should, since they traded away Soto and care about winning the trade. And so CJ's performance with them is what matters and would cease to matter if he was traded. This brings up a funny circumstance with Drew Thorpe. He was sent to San Diego by the Yankees in the second SODO deal, but never played with the Padres and didn't gain any WAR with them. So contrary to the next level down clause in the above prompt, should we count the war of Dylan Cease, whom San Diego got from the White Sox? Probably not. I did a quick check. And the guys in the trades while with the Padres or the Nats specifically and respectively total 29.9 war and Soto is at 40.7, but I guess that's okay. So that's the career total for Soto.

[Meg Rowley]

Not right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not since the trades. I guess so that's. So I guess we're talking. Okay, so career WAR for Soto even prior to the trades. And that's what we're comparing here so 29.9 for the others. Robert says I haven't double checked the Math and Soto at 4.40.7 seems likely given CJ Gore and not woods but Wood being decent to good and young plus King and Vasquez. So I guess if it's that close already, if it's only like a, a 10 win edge for Sodo. Right. If that's accurate then. And, and STTO's got a long road ahead of him. Obviously he's going to accumulate many more war. So it's not really a open and shut case here. But that is a lot of players. I mean Wood seems like he could be a superstar and Gore's been very good and then Abrams and King.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, that's, and he's been great this year.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So. Yeah, yeah, it's actually, it's a good question. Like we could probably get the, the rest of career zips or something and actually stat blast this somehow. But do you have a, a gut sense like can, can the field. Can this accumulation of players make up about 10 wins above replacement on Soto over the next however many years?

[Meg Rowley]

I would think that they can. I think there's some good players in there. I mean he's going to keep accumulating as a problem but you know, would I, would I believe it if you told me that one of those guys like popped an awesome season out of nowhere, or maybe not even out of nowhere, but like particularly because so many of them play actual defensive positions. I mean, yeah, I mean Abrams isn't a very good shortstop but like I think James Wood is capable of that. You know, like could I, could I see him sort of tipping the scales in favor? Particularly because you have like, and you have guys who haven't even debuted yet. Like Susana's in that group. I don't know. I think it's possible. I think it would be challenging. But it's also so many guys that maybe, maybe not.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And I'd, I'd like to think that Soto would be a hitter who will be productive for a long time because he's just, he's so smart about hitting and he's just got such a great eye and everything. But I, I, I don't have a whole lot of confidence. I don't have a high degree of confidence in like projecting that this player or that player will buck the aging curve trend.

[Meg Rowley]

Sure. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Because I've been burdened by that before.

[Meg Rowley]

Oh yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Like, and you know, I thought, oh, Joey Votto, he's such a cerebral, just a Smart and he's looking at all the stats and everything and he'll just be able to fight off father time forever. And you know that. That didn't exactly happen, though. He had his moments. But yeah, so. And yeah, it's. It's much more certain that Soto's not going to be adding anything defensively from here on out, probably. So whether he continues to be a bad corner outfielder for a while or just dhs. And he could be very valuable as a DH because he can be such a great hitter and he could be a great hitter for another decade. So he could, he could easily. You know, he's got 40 war to this point. Like he could. And that's just in his age 19 to 26 seasons. So ideally, hopefully he more than doubles that, but who knows? So, yeah, like, probably his rate of WAR accrual will slow just because like the base running and the defense is not going to get better. And his bat was like so mature and polished early that, you know, I still feel like, well, I guess last year was kind of the year I was waiting for with, with Soto, like other than the shortened 2020, when he was great last year felt like the year went, ah, okay, this is, this is it. This is like sort of his offensive ceiling or something close to it. And so, you know, probably we've seen about his best on a single season basis and you just kind of hope that he keeps doing that for as long as possible, which he. But yeah, I guess I lean towards saying that he'll be caught, but also not with a ton of confidence. Yeah. So we just said dangerous to predict things and very dangerous to predict things and actually think that you're right. So, yeah, let us take a quick break and we will be back with your boss, David Appleman, founder, CEO of Fangrass. To talk about 20 years of the site. I want to hear about Dynam rbis. Well, we're joined now by David Appleman, founder, proprietor and dark overlord of Fangraphs who is here in honor of the 20th birthday of Fangraphs. David, welcome and happy faniversary.

[David Appleman]

Well, thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having me on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Rank your creations in terms of how much they mean to you. Fan grafts and your two actual children. Starting off with a softball.

[David Appleman]

Yeah, I do. I have jokes with my wife that fan graphs was my first child. Yeah. But the kids are definitely one and one and then fangraphs is two.

[Ben Lindbergh]

All right. Sounds like a cop out to me. Very, very diplomatic.

[Meg Rowley]

Very diplomatic. When we play this back for them 20 years from now, they'll be like, wow, dad, he really knew what he was doing.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Your kids are young. How much have they accomplished in life at this point, really? I mean, compared to fan grafts, which is redefined the baseball analytics space, your kids have a large legacy to live up to with your firstborn fancrafts, your.

[David Appleman]

Eldest, they have more potential than I do at the moment, I think. So you never know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Well, we want to have you share the origin story, which you told briefly in your post for the anniversary on fangraphs.com and maybe you also shared in some form when you joined me and Jeff on episode 1321, way back when. That was before fan grafts even turned 15. But the origin story hasn't changed since then. But our audience has. So for those who don't recall that interview or weren't with us then, how did fan grafts start?

[David Appleman]

I was playing a lot of Fantasy Baseball in 2004, 2005, and I was working at America Online at the time. And I was. I put together these big packets, like these big PowerPoint decks for executives that were full of graphs. And I thought Dial up was short lived in terms of its future. I guess I was not right about that, given that Dial up is shutting down, I guess next month for aol. But yeah, rip yeah, but there were lots of layoffs going on at the time, and I thought that maybe I could translate what I was doing at AOL into baseball stats. And one of the things I did at AOL was with this packet of graphs, I kind of automated it down to more or less of a button click. So I did have a lot of free time to manage my fantasy baseball teams and read baseball analysis. So it kind of freed me up. And then at some point I got in touch with Baseball Info Solutions. They I got me a data feed and then I worked on it for about 3, 4 months and launched Fan Graphs with 10 graphs for every player.

[Meg Rowley]

The famous graphs.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, the titular eponymous graphs. The graphs were there from the beginning, but it sounds like there was sort of a slow start. And you actually mentioned in your post that things changed when you got writing to go with the graphs. And they've been sort of in a symbiotic relationship ever since, I suppose. So did you think at the start that the stats would just speak for themselves and that that was all you needed? Like, had you envisioned that there would be an editorial side of the site and you were just building up to that, or did you just realize, did it dawned on you that you Needed someone to sort of use the stats and share the stats and create content around the stats.

[David Appleman]

Well, when I started the site, I was actually writing for the site and I wrote this series called Daily Graphing, which tried to explain how to use all the stats. They were very short posts, but I wrote them every single day. I did not include any of them in any of the greatest fangraphs posts. Not one. It was really difficult. I honestly don't know how. It's just, you know, some people can do it. I could not. And so I did envision writing with it, but I guess initially I thought envisioned me writing, which was not a good idea. So getting Dave on board and then I think in that first, in that first group it was Dave Cameron, Eric Seidman, and then also Mark Hewlett. Those were the first three fan graphs. Writing hires.

[Meg Rowley]

I'm curious. We went back and forth on your piece a good bit, and it's hard to distill 20 years of history into a thousand word poster or whatever. I think of some of the big shifts in terms of the site taking a step forward as being related to who you hired. Bringing Dave on board. Eventually, folks like Carson and Jeff and Eno and the fantasy folks joining the site and then the introduction of what was win value at the time and became War is another big marker where it's like, okay, we're, we're doing, we're doing something over here. When did it dawn on you that maybe you didn't think you'd get 20 years out of it, but when did it start to seem feasible to you that like, this was a, this was a going concern? You know, you were going to have something to say about baseball and people were going to look to the site to have some sort of authority about what was going on in the game.

[David Appleman]

I mean, I think after WAR was launched, people really took notice and it made a big difference. And then also, I mean, I think with Dave and Jeff and Carson and Eno, I think a lot of the voices of the site became a lot more mainstream and they were read in front offices and by people in baseball and by other baseball media. I mean, honestly, I think a lot of the site's relevant. Like, the majority of the site's relevance has to do with the voices at the site and how they've utilized the data and made the data accessible and worth having part of like everyday baseball discourse. I mean, in terms of like, did I think fan drafts was going to get to 20 years old and be relevant? I mean, I don't know, it's just, it's like one of these things where you just kind of keep doing it and then you're, you find out you're there. So it's kind of strange to look back. Like, I think with the exception of early on, I don't think there was ever any time where I was like, I'm going to stop doing this. And then as we got, you know, more people working for Fan Graph, I felt more of a responsibility to make sure that people were still, could still have jobs. So, like, even if I wanted to go do something else, like, I, I couldn't. And I don't like, I, I love, like, I actually really enjoy doing what I do at fangraph still. Like, I think, you know, I wake up every morning excited that I check Slack, I make sure the stats load like, I, I, I enjoy like the majority of what I do at fangraphs still. And I think it's, I don't know, you know, like any job, there are parts you don't like. But I think it's, I think it's become more enjoyable over time. Like, I think there's, you know, when you're first starting something, I think you get very into it and you want it to succeed. And then I think, at least with fan Graphs, naturally there was, there were some points where it just became really hard. And I think all of us at Fan Graphs kind of powered through and I feel like we're in a really good spot now and I feel really good about the powering through.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You've weathered many departures of people who have gotten snapped up, not just by other media organizations, but by teams, of course. And so two questions I had for you, which you can answer in whatever level of detail you're comfortable with. How close did you ever come to going to work for a team? Was there a team that said, I want fan graphs for myself. I don't want all the other teams to read this stuff. I want this guy who built the fan graph stat pages to build our internal database and we'll just hog all of this data.

[David Appleman]

So there's never been a team which wanted to buy fan graphs and just take fan graphs off the market. Like that hockey site, I guess, which was purchased by the Cats, maybe. So that was never like something that anyone was interested in doing personally. Very early on in maybe 2006, I was interviewed for a Yankees job, which I think at that point if I had gotten, I almost certainly would have taken and there wouldn't be probably not be a fan graphs Right now, but I, apparently I didn't, I didn't finish very high in that, that job search.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So that worked out for the best probably for a lot of people you subsequently employed. Yeah, it was Cap Friendly was that site that the Capitals bought last year, I think. Yeah. Anyway, one person leaves, another person comes in and was difficult, I'm sure, to lose Dave, Cameron and Carson Si. But then that worked out well for Meg and it worked out well for you because you got Meg. So it all works out, I guess, in the long run. Okay, related question. Have you ever come close to divesting in some other way? Has some other media entity ever, you know, you've partnered with various companies over the years. Was there ever a conversation? Were you ever tempted to pass this along to someone else and cash out and move on?

[David Appleman]

Honestly, no. There's been people who have been interested over the years, but no one. There's never been an offer which has been sort of the ballpark of what would even make any sense. And so like there's, there's been a lot of like mildly insulting offers over the years. I mean it would have to be, there would have to be a lot of boxes to check to make sure that like the integrity of the site and sort of what has been built is sustained in like a way that I think is true to its vision. But I think on the the other side of that, that's also not very realistic. So I think the likelihood of that happening is very, very slim.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You're stuck for life now.

[David Appleman]

I mean, some amount of money is gonna, you know, I'm not a crazy person but you know, I, there's, I've never shopped a site around, you know, I'm very happy just like doing what we do. And I think, and I think with different ownership I, I think it would be very different.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Stop lowballing Appleman. Everyone just insulting offers.

[Meg Rowley]

We occupy this really funny little niche because like we are mighty, I would like to say, but we are still small even though our full time staff has grown pretty dramatically over the years, at least relative to when you were starting out. And I think people have this weird perception of fan graphs as having a huge staff and then they are often surprised when they send a support email and you answer it. The CEO of the company is answering the support email. But if you didn't have to worry about the constraints of operating a media company, if we weren't trying to navigate like advertising and membership and we just had limitless budget, is there anything that you would want to do? With the site that, like, we're just not maybe positioned right now to do, but hopefully sometime. But what's the. What's the big project, the white whale that has eluded you up until now? This might not be an answerable question, but try.

[David Appleman]

I mean, FanGraphs is a baseball site, but, I mean, I think anyone who talks to me knows I'm also a really big tennis fan.

[Meg Rowley]

Yes.

[David Appleman]

So, like, maybe off somewhere else there could be a tennis graphs. I don't know. I also don't like the idea of doing other sports, so I feel very conflicted about that. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Meg just offered you a blank check, any amount of money in the world, and you said maybe we could cover tennis.

[David Appleman]

Well, I mean, if we had a blank check, I mean, like, in reality, what would happen is we'd hire a bunch of people. We'd hire a bunch of people. That's what would happen in reality.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Since we were talking about the symbiotic relationship between the stats and the writing, I was wondering about the stats side of it, because I think a big part of what contributed to Fan Graft's rise was that the stats were just so accessible and navigable. And I worked for Baseball Prospectus for years, and I could not have said the same about that site at the time. And Baseball Prospectus had warp before fancrafts had war. Right. And had VORP and all of these other things. But A, they were paywalled and B, they were just difficult to navigate and kind of wonky and just like, limited functionality of the site. And that was just a struggle for years. And I love Baseball Prospectus and enjoyed my time there. I actually, I tried to split. I tried to play both sides. I tried to write for Fan Graphs and Baseball Prospectus when I left the Yankees, but that didn't work out. Not because of you, but more because of bp. Regardless, this is a podcast about your history, not mine. But I think that had a huge part to play in the popularity of the site because everyone could find things and use the site, and it was just there and it worked, you know, and lots of powerful functionality. So that's, I think, a credit to the way that you built it and the other developers who've come on board since then. But it seems to me that that has had a lot to do with the fact that fancraft is just sort of everywhere now that people can. You know, it'd be one thing if you just put WAR on the site, but no one could really find it or use it. But that was, I think, a key.

[David Appleman]

Yeah. I think the last time I was on, you mentioned something about the site always just working for you, which to me I think was a little bit of a surprise.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. But you know, most of the time.

[David Appleman]

It does make a big difference. I think getting the, you know, getting the data you want and getting it fast and accurately, like these are, these are kind of like the things which matter most for data sites. I think there is, you know, you could have, you could have like the best data in the world, but if nobody can get to it, like, what is it doesn't, you know, it's not abuse to anybody. So. Yeah, I mean, I think that's something we focus a lot on is making sure people can get to what they want and then also being able to export it and, and play with it on their own. Like, I think that's something we definitely encourage.

[Meg Rowley]

One has improved even in the time that I've been at the site. Like, we don't have a lot of database freezes anymore, which is so nice because they used to have to happen often. And then I felt like a. Felt like a mom who was like taking her kid to the emergency room and I'm like, well, it's out of my hands. Hope that somebody else can fix this. Cannot shepherd us through a database freeze.

[David Appleman]

Well, well, you know, we have like this big bot prog problem which happens.

[Meg Rowley]

Bot problem?

[David Appleman]

Yeah, Every so often. Where. If so, for the trade deadline, I, I shut off essentially. Access to all bots.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[David Appleman]

On the site. And if you look at the number of non members that are coming to the site versus all our traffic, it's like 2% of our traffic and the other 98% is bots. It's pretty crazy. That's. These days, typically what causes the site to go down or have site issues, it's the bots.

[Ben Lindbergh]

How have you envisioned the scope? As you've worked with various data providers, you keep adding new things. So college stats, Negro league stats, stats for Japan Korea. Right. So these all require investments, both on the back end, building the pages and everything, but also financial investments in paying for that data. So how do you decide? Does this fit for Fangrass? Is this something we need? Is this something that's going to add value or translate to revenue or subscribers for us or. It just seems like this would be cool. Like fan graph should have this.

[David Appleman]

I mean, I think there's a part of it which is just this, this is cool. We should, we should have this for college data. I think we technically Promised that back in 2019, but there were some issues getting the data up on the site. And so it took another, I guess, six years. I mean, in terms of like, I think the new yearly data has. That's. That's kind of like essential to me, that database at the moment. But the KBO data came about during the pandemic, so that was kind of. It was the only baseball around for a little bit. And so at the time, I don't think we really had anything else to do except get KBO data up on the site. And then with npb, I think there's just a lot of interest in npb, especially in Japan. And I think we've seen that right now our traffic from Japan is number two in terms of countries. And I think it may have even eclipsed Canada traffic by a little bit this year since we've added NPV data. So there's definitely an audience that is very interested in this type of data for NPV fans. So I mean, to answer the question, I think there's. It's the combination like, is this going to be cool? Yes. Is there an audience for it? Yes. The Women's Professional Baseball League, which is I guess scheduled to start next year, that's something that I'm actively trying to get data for the start of that. I don't know exactly where that's going to like if that's going to pan out or not, but I am in like talking to data providers to see if that's something which there will be available that we could add to the site.

[Meg Rowley]

We're always loath to share specific development timelines because as you noted with college data, sometimes things happen in an unforeseen way and then things take longer than you're anticipating. Like the data presentation is funny or there's a global pandemic. Just obviously normal stuff that can happen and delay a project. But I'm curious if there are things that you could maybe tease for our listeners that are in the pipeline for some time and you need not commit to when that sometime would be. But are there things that you're especially looking forward to in terms of new functionality that you can share with folks?

[David Appleman]

Sure. I think one thing that we have been talking about doing for a little while is bringing more of the roster resource tools to leaderboards and custom reports. So if you want to filter by draft class or by contract status or things like that, I think that's something which we are certainly hoping to have available this off season. That's something which has been on the list for a long time, which I think is. Is actually going to happen. Yeah. There's one thing.

[Meg Rowley]

Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We'Ll take it. Not getting any more right now. Maybe when we talk to you again in five years, there will be new things to tease. But when did you become aware that fangraphs was read in a pervasive way in front offices? I mean, before teams started hiring your employers and poaching people, presumably you. You started hearing from teams if they inquired about data, or you just kind of heard through the grapevine that people are paying attention to this. And, and I wonder, you know, in the early years, I assumed that fan graphs was probably better than what a lot of teams had internally. Now they all have their own systems that are fancy, and I'm sure they still look at fan graphs, but they probably have in some ways better, more granular data than we can have in the public here. But what was your sense of sort of how fangraphs was appreciated inside the game and how that has evolved as the data available to teams has changed?

[David Appleman]

I think initially Dave Cameron told me that front offices were reading fan graphs because I don't. I just don't have really that much interaction. Or at least back, like a long time ago, I didn't really have any interaction with front offices, really. But I think going to the winner meetings for the first time, chatting with people, like, I think it. It became clear that people were kind of familiar. This was maybe in 2011 or 2012, was the first winter meetings I went to. And so I think just talking with people at the winter meetings, like, it became obvious that people knew what they were reading fan graphs or certain people would tell me that, you know, fan graphs is the first thing they read in the morning or that it's, you know, their homepage. So, you know, I don't know how much that's the case still, but I think for a certain amount of time it was. I mean, I think front offices are definitely still reading fan drafts quite a bit now. So.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And it seems like the relationship with other websites, other baseball analysis companies like that, that has changed too, over the years, where it seems like everyone's sort of friendly now. But that wasn't necessarily always the case, at least from my perspective. There was more of a rivalry and fangraphs was the upstart and BP was the old guard, which is funny because BP was like the new kid on the block to everyone else but the old guards in the sabermetric Internet circle. And it seems like just everyone gets along now and fan graphs And Baseball Reference standardized their war values and thresholds and everything, and so feels like people are kind of pulling together, even though you're still ostensibly competitors, I suppose. But I wonder what your take on that is.

[David Appleman]

Yeah, I think, you know, maybe 15 years ago, there was this sense of encroachment in the space. I get that. I think it's like, it's tough when a new company comes in and is like, hey, I'm gonna do something similar to what we're doing, and they start to gain traction and, you know, it's not. It's not that much fun, and it makes everything harder. So, you know, I understand, like, why they're there. It might not have been the friendliest of environments, but I think Jeff Sullivan always said something where there was essentially, there was space for all these sites that, you know, just because one site was doing better, one site, you know, popped up. Doesn't mean that there's not still space for another site. In some sense, there's. There's only so much space, but I think. I think there's quite a bit of appetite for good sports content. Between us and Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Reference, we've all sort of carved out our own little spaces in the area within baseball analysis. And I think we've kind of learned that just because there's another player in the space doesn't mean it's going to be it's the end of the world or that we all can't be successful. So I think that's. That's become a big part of it. Also, I think just media and Internet media is just really. It's just a really difficult spot. And so I think when you've all kind of been in it long enough, you. You all understand what the difficulties are and how, like, there's a lot of kind of camaraderie around, like, hey, you know, like, support us, but also support, you know, our friends over here.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, I think that there's a real. Especially in the last couple of years, I think that what you're describing really got accelerated by everyone having to weather the pandemic, then everyone having to weather the lockout. And now we're sitting here dealing with, you know, Google search results being completely decimated and AI scraping our articles so people don't click through to them, and the pressure to align yourself with a sports book. And so I think that a lot of the sites you're naming, and there are definitely others, we are not providing an exhaustive list. This is the other thing that David and I struggled with as we were editing his piece, where it's like, oh, gosh, once we start naming people, then we have to name everyone because we don't want anyone to feel excluded. 20 years is a long time. A lot of folks have cycled through the site. But, you know, you. You end up having this sense of, like, camaraderie with, you know, with a baseball prospectus or a baseball reference or a baseball America, or, you know, the list goes on where it's like, okay, we're. We're all trying to weather this, and we're all facing similar headwinds, and the infighting would not do anyone any good. It also helps that, like, Craig and I are very good friends. So it's like, okay, well, I guess we're not going to fight just because. And I came from bp, you know, that's where I grew up. So I think there's been so much shifting of writers around to various publications at various junctures that everybody considers every site a home or a friend in some regard. And I think that's helped to sort of increase the sense of friendly, you know, just solidarity between everybody.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So, yeah, that was the last thing I was going to ask about. Just the ecosystem, the environment for a site like Fancrest. And just, is this getting harder? You'd think it would be getting easier after you've got 20 years in and you have this established brand and you know what you're doing now, and everyone knows the name, but just the headwinds of everything in this industry, multiple industries just make it so difficult to continue to run a site like this as successfully as you have. So you said something earlier, but just like the goal is keep going, and it's like, it's laudable that you've managed to do that for two decades despite all of these challenges. So how much harder has it gotten and how have you adjusted the business model because of that? Because of all the things that Meg was just saying. And know that you've put an emphasis on subscriptions and memberships as opposed to just advertising, because that just doesn't pay the bills anymore.

[David Appleman]

I think it's been very tricky because just when you think you're kind of in good shape, the ground shifts beneath you.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[David Appleman]

Like, we've had one year where our advertising revenue looked really great, and then the next year where it's looked really not great. And so with digital media essentially moving towards subscription, which is, I guess, what how media used to make its money, or at least a lot of its money. I mean, I think there's only so much kind of reinventing the wheel. Like, if you look at the way media used to be sustainable and the way media is now, it's still, still like the same stuff. It's subscriptions and advertising. Oh, you're not really, you know, that's. Those are kind of like the things which keep it afloat. And then I guess there are certain media companies which do more B2B stuff, but there's only so many levers you can pull. I think AI. And with Google search numbers going down, I mean, I think that does pose a significant problem for a lot of media companies. But I was telling Meg that, like, we've never been really that good at SEO. So.

[Meg Rowley]

The thing I'm the worst at in my job is like, this headline will definitely lead to clicks.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Thank God for Bauman to Batman's headlines lead to clicks or laughs or both. I know the latter. Definitely both. Okay.

[David Appleman]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's definitely both. I mean, people, right, can definitely identify a Batman headline.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, that's for sure. Yeah.

[David Appleman]

So, yeah, I think it's like for us, we've kind of avoided some of the short term cash grab pitfalls. Though SEO, I will say, has not been a short term cash grab. I mean, that's been around for a long time. But when it comes to things like gambling money or people used to be part of the Facebook media ecosystem and then like the rug got pulled out from under them. Like these are not things we've participated in. So while we haven't been able to capitalize on them, we haven't become reliant on them either.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Just insulated from the downturn because you just were never good at any of that stuff.

[Meg Rowley]

We are very good at business.

[David Appleman]

Like in some sense, yes. It's either I'm not very good at business or I'm just, you know, taking, taking the long, the long view.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes.

[David Appleman]

But, you know, both can be true.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, you certainly seem to be doing something right because Van Graffs is alive and well, seems to be thriving. I'm certainly happy that it has provided a home for this podcast for several years at this point. So I'm grateful for that and hope that this is just the start that you will not only outlive Dial up, but long outlive it.

[David Appleman]

Me too. I hope that as well.

[Ben Lindbergh]

All right, one minor mystery solved. Back on episode 2341 in late June, we wondered how Red Sox pitcher Cutter Crawford had hurt his wrist. He suffered a season ending wrist injury, but the Red Sox were very cagey about how he had hurt his wrist. They wouldn't specify. They made it seem like something scandalous. Well, I guess we know now, more or less. There's a post from friend of the show Alex Speer of the Boston Globe on Friday. Cutter Crawford is at Fenway. He said he suffered his wrist injury while doing maintenance work around the house. He felt a pop and recognized it would be an issue. He expressed frustration given that he was nearing a live batting practice session when he got injured. Well, that's boring maintenance work around the house. If that's all it was, I don't know why everyone was so reticent when that subject came up before. Anyway, now we know, I guess. Also when Meg made a comment the other day about how we had discussed Ohtani a little less lately than we have historically, I said that effectively Wild Patreon supporter and wiki keeper Raymond Chen could probably look that up for us. He did look up the rate of Ohtani mentions in the episode descriptions. So when he's actually listed in the episode summary, which means we probably talked about him at some length. And here's the percentage of episodes in which he was a headliner dating back to 20162016 3% 2017 the year before his MLB debut 12% 2018 his MLB rookie season 19% then 2019 7% 2020 3% 2021 fully operational Ohtani 21% 2022 15% 2023 35% that was Picotani talk on the podcast 2024 22% though some of that was Ippe Mizuhara related and this year so far 14% so it is indeed a career low rate of being a headliner on effectively wild episodes for Ohtani since his MLB debut, with the exception of that two season stretch 2019-2020 when he mostly wasn't pitching and also wasn't hitting that well. So yeah, we've reined it in a little bit. Guess it just goes to show that you can get used to anything. In the early days I didn't do as thorough descriptions and so the data doesn't work quite as well. Raymond also looked up Mike Trout's rates, but I think they're misleading for those first few years of the podcast. So he has trout peaking at 24% in 2018, which was actually higher than Ohtani's rate in Ohtani's rookie season. Amusingly, Williams astadillo also peaked at 19% in 2018. That's the Jeff effect. Ostadillo was an effectively wild headliner at the same rate as Shohei Ohtani in Ohtani's MLB rookie year. Alas, Williams has been skunked so far in 2025. As far as I know, he hasn't played since winter ball. Oh, and earlier I noted that it would be a record comeback if the Guardians overtook the tigers in the AL Central. At one point they trailed Detroit by 15 and a half games. The biggest deficit ever erased is 14 games by the 1978 Yankees over the Red Sox. So yes, it would be unprecedented. But it became even more unlikely on Friday as the Guardians lost and the Tigers won to widen the gap to seven and a half games. Perhaps you will consider supporting fan graphs with a membership, and we hope that you will also consider supporting Effectively Wild on Patreon. In fact, there is one tier of Patreon support at which you eventually get a fangraphs membership for free. Well, it's one of the perks, so you can kind of do both at once. Both good causes at least from our perspective, although we are somewhat biased. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effective effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners Marty Mertens, David Umhoffer, John Smith, Seamus Cooper and Tom thanks to all of you. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can contact us through the Patreon site. If not, you can send us [e-mail] Send your questions, your comments, your intro and outro themes. You can also join our Facebook [e-mail] group effectivelywild. You can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music and elsewhere. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectivelywild and you can check the show notes at Fan Graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance that will do it for today and for this week. We thank you as always for listening listening. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week.

[Meg Rowley]

What's the greatest podcast of all?

[Ben Lindbergh]

If you love the game of baseball, it's Effectively wild. It's effectively wild when land and back.