← The Windup: A show about Baseball
The Windup: A show about Baseball
The Roundtable | BONUS EPISODE-Jane Leavy talks about her new book
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- [00:00]
A
Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too. Ah, really? Thanks. Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Term supply see capitalone.com bank capital1na member FDIC Three men, three murders, one killer who simply vanished 30 years later. Crime Adjacent host Chase Patrick returns to Ridgewood to uncover how the nation's most prolific serial killer went undiscovered and why he started killing again in 2023. Crime adjacent is the never ending true crime story told weekly. Listen to Crime Adjacent wherever you listen to podcasts. Monday Sidekick. The AI agent that knows you and your business, thinks ahead and takes action. How's get anything seriously? Monday Sidekick AI you'll love to use.
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B
Start a free trial today on Monday.com. this is the Wind Up. Hello and welcome to a special bonus edition of the Roundtable. I am Andy McCullough. No Grant Frisbee? No Sam Miller. But I am not alone. I'm here with the absolute legend Jane Levy to talk about her new book, Make Me Commissioner. I know what's wrong with baseball and how to fix it. Jane, it is an honor to get a chance to talk to you. How are you doing?
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C
If my dog's okay, who, as you know, is a major character in the book. Yes. Then I'll be okay. But she's at the vet at the moment.
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B
Oh.
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C
No paw examined. I think she stepped on a wasp. If she's all right, we'll go with God. It's all right.
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B
Does she often step on wasps or rakes or rocks or things like that?
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C
No, she's incredibly agile. And the manager, though, in the Cape League, as you probably know, they refer to managers as coaches. So the coach of the Orleans Firebirds, who were, prior to that the Cardinals, until MLB stepped in and decided that every Cape League team with a major league moniker had to surrender said moniker or only use official MLB Merchants. So my Cardinals became Firebirds, and when they became Firebirds, Betty the dog became the mascot.
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B
Right, Right. Yeah. So it's one benefit of MLB's sort of takeover of the, you know, the minor league system. Is your dog got some work?
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C
No, no, no. She. She would have gotten it either which way. It's just. She would have been a Cardinal.
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B
Well, fair enough.
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C
Firebird.
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B
Fair enough. The book is out September 9th. I very much Enjoyed it, which is not that surprising given your work in the past. However, as listeners of the show do know, I harbor utter contempt for the Savannah Bananas. So to enjoy even those chapters was really impressive. But before we get to all that, a very important question. Are the Yankees back?
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C
Let me just say I have to answer a question for a program to be named later in which I had to say, what was I wrong about? And my first answer was, I didn't think anybody could spend $350 million on a roster and not start the season with a third baseman. I was.
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B
Well, they've done it like four years in a row. It is impressive.
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C
It's unbelievable. Cletus Boyer, one of my heroes, is turning in his grave, wherever he is. I don't understand the construction of that lineup. They have finally stopped having gone completely right handed and have started to recognize there is an advantage to left handers in the Yankee Stadium with the 298 or whatever it is down the line now. So are they back? No, I don't think they're good enough to be back. Honestly.
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B
They are a fascinating sort of experiment in the, sort of, I guess, in caring about optimization over all else. And it seems like they have just, they've staked their claim that, like, we believe that this is the right way to construct a baseball team and we are going to continue down that path come hell or high water, no matter the stimuli presented in front of us.
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C
That suggest otherwise, and no matter the age of Aaron Judge and those surrounding him who are not all youngsters. And I mean, it's not a particularly young roster, as you know. I mean, I could almost play for them. In fact, I, you know, I, I volunteered. When Mike Rizzo was still in charge of the Gnats, I voluntarily called him up. I said, okay, I'm, I'm willing to pitch out of the pen. I know that not everybody is, but I would be delighted, too.
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B
Yeah, well, you know, with the Yankees, if you're just willing to take a, you know, one of those contracts that defers money till later so that you can help with the luxury tax, they might have done it, but who can say?
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C
I have a friend here in Cape Cod who is a poet. Her name is Gail Mazur and she wrote what is maybe the best baseball poem certainly that I've ever read. And she's a Boston fan and she lives up on Provincetown with, you know, a porch hovering over the water. It's a wonderful poem and it's actually about Mickey Mantle's last at bat. At Fenway Park. I had just read it and was sitting with her in this beautiful spot and I said, well, I'm really beginning to have doubts. I'm wavering about the Yankees and it's just really hard. Steinbrenner, believe me or not, this is so long ago. Steinbrenner was still alive and calling the shots. And I confessed that I had not given away, but had hidden away the authentic Yankee warm up jacket that the boss gave to John Paul Stevens, the late Supreme Court justice, because I had followed George Steinbrenner through the halls of that horrible hotel in Washington where Mickey and Billy and Whitey did what Jim Bouton later said was called beaver shooting. And I'm trying to keep up with George and he's striding across the. Across the lobby, which was endless, and said, well, Jane, I'm going to replace the monuments or no, I'm not going to replace the monuments. I'm going to put a waterfall over the monuments for the youth of the South Bronx. I'm like, no, no, you can't do that. So I had stopped wearing the jacket is the point. And Gail said to me, if you allow George M. Steinbrenner III to dictate your allegiances and in baseball, then you are not a real fan. And with that I put the jacket back on.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And they promptly won, you know, a little bit in the 90s, you know.
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B
A little bit, yeah, they did better.
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C
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think those things are negotiable, you know, those allegiances aren't negotiable. Some people come and go with them. I mean, Dan Okrent, for example, I know, you know, Dan, he gave up his passion for the Detroit Tigers because his son is a Cubs fan. So I said, oh, great, then you can be losers together.
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B
So the book, which again I very much enjoyed, is it the sort of thing that when you have written biographies of Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, there's really nowhere left to go besides just running the sport?
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C
In a way, yes, that's exactly what happened. I did look around for another star in that magnitude of stardom and they don't exist in baseball today. And bluntly said, I looked around, I said, well, that's the problem. They have no stars anymore. They don't know how to promote them. If you ask Oakrent, they suppress them because they think it gives them leverage in negotiations, but they don't know how to make them, they don't know how to promote them, they don't know how to keep them healthy. And you can't get access to them. I mean, you know this better than I do. I mean, it's not like the old days where you could actually get to know a human being very easily. So there was nobody. I mean, I have two rules. One is I will never write a biography about someone who has been done by a friend. And I will never write a biography that I don't think I can improve upon what's been done in the past. And I literally couldn't find anyone to do. I tried. Briefly, I entertained the idea of doing the core four and got as far as calling only one of the agents involved and said, this is a nightmare. I'm not going there. But really, that was the ultimate hint of what's wrong and why it is so much less attractive to normal people today. Shohei is phenomenal. I mean, there's no, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. And his global reach, which the Dodgers will profit off forever, they bought the Lakers through it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And now Billy Jeans in there. I mean, it's a whole club. I want to be. I want to be a non principal owner too. He's otherworldly. But if I were Shohei, I would refuse to pitch for the Los Angeles Dodgers. They're doing something wrong. I mean, they're all doing something wrong, but they're doing something wrong. That leads to the second point that I think is so prevalent. The carelessness and the belated attention to what's happened to pitching arms. There are now 50 new ones who've been added to the running total of Tommy John. And Tommy John, like surgical repairs just in the first, what, seven months of 20, 25. It's stunning. And it's not just that they're ripping people's arms apart in this insane quest for speed. They're ripping the fabric of the game apart. And the narratives that used to so seasons and teams and even, you know, decades of rivalries together. You can't have matchups in a world where you don't know if a guy is going to be able to show up. You can't have rivalries. You know, if you, if, if people can't stay healthy, you, who are you going to root for when the guy, you know, you want to go back and see pitch can't go to the mound. So it's not just the carelessness about the health of the people. I mean, they are grown ups and they are agreeing to do it. It's easy to understand why they have a limited shot at this and, you know, they can go sit on the injured list and get paid and get better and. And if this Tommy John doesn't work, well, there's a new Tommy John. We can try that one. The hybrid surgery, obviously, is what I mean. But I really think that has thoroughly unraveled tapestry of fandom in baseball. You can't root for the same stories and analytics don't tell stories in the way that human beings do. And so they've really lost that.
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B
You have a quote from Bill James that you got and I'm gonna get to in a second. I do just want to remind the listeners that Jane is wrong about one thing. There is one star in baseball, Clayton Kershaw. There's a book about him called the Last of His Kind. Thousands of copies are still available. The sales numbers do not suggest that Jane's point is accurate. That is not true. But.
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C
So he wouldn't talk to me. What did you want me. What do you want me to say?
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B
Well, you know. Yeah, it's. Yeah, he. I think he's done with books. He did, he did one.
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C
It definitive. It was terrific.
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B
Oh, thank you. That's very kind of you, but. So you talked to Bill James, I guess he had. He wrote you, I think, a 7,000 word email. And one part that you quoted that it really does get to kind of. What is the central dilemma in baseball? In a lot of ways, right. Which is, as he wrote, relentless pressure on players and managers to find competitive advantages on the one side versus a complete lack of action by management, ownership and league officials to defend against the negative consequences of that and the entertainment value of the sport. And like, this conflict is not unique to baseball. Right. Like it's happened in basketball where the usage of analytics has made it so that there's more three point shots. It's happened in football where the usage of analytics makes you go for it on fourth down and throw more, you know, and three yards in a cloud of dust has gone, you know, the way of the dodo. I mean, it's changed the way professional poker is played. There's all sorts of ways. The thing that is where maybe football has gotten lucky is that analytics has made it more exciting. Right. Like it's more exciting to go for it on fourth down.
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C
Right, Exactly Right.
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B
And so like, it's. It's hard for me to, I don't know, render a judgment because, like, sometimes you. There could be a way that analytics had affected baseball and made it better. Right. Like it's not to say that it's not that the usage of the data and trying to win inherently makes it worse, but it has clearly distorted it in a way that has made the product, I think can be less sort of enjoyable. And I was curious, like, as you went through this journey and you traveled the country and you talked to people on all sorts, you know, like old school people, new school people, players like, do you think that most people involved in the game understand that conflict? Are they aware of it or are they just like kind of doing their thing and trying to get through the day?
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C
I made it a point to not talk to idiots and not to talk to.
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B
And yet you're here on this show.
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C
And yet I'm here. Nor to talk to people who generally go with a received wisdom as it would. So among the skewed group that I spoke to, yeah, they all get it. They get it. But I'm not condemning the players for what they're doing. I mean, you know their bottom line. You don't think of them. They're working stiffs. Right. And they take fully informed chances. When they do, when they perform the way they're performing and when they're asked to, I think they get an idea that it's not as much fun. Do you look up every time there's a home run now? I don't.
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B
Yeah. I mean, I think that it is. We talked about this relatively recently on the show where we were talking about Dave Parker's outfield throw in the All Star Game and why outfield throws are still so, like, they still, like, you know, take your breath away in some ways. And I, and I made the point, it was like, hey, if you saw one home run a week, you'd be like, oh my God, he hit it over the fence. Like, it's an incredible physical achievement. Right. To hit a ball that hard, that far, you know, but when you see it, you know, 40 times a night or whatever it is. Yeah, it loses, it loses some specialness or uniqueness.
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C
Even the catches, even the great catches, and there seem to have been a lot of them recently where the outfielder is, throws himself over the fence to bring a ball back are becoming ubiquitous because those guys are very athletic and they're also a lot bigger.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And skinnier than the previous era, but even those are ubiquitous. That's why I just want to, I just want to point this out. And I know everybody will say this is crazy and radical and probably it is, but that's my point, is to be crazy and Radical. Put an 18 foot fence around the outfield wall of every Ballpark, make it loose sight or whatever it is that hockey rinks are constructed of so that when a hockey puck goes slamming into the, into the glass, nobody gets. It doesn't shatter and nobody gets hurt. I pay money to see Aaron Judge go collide with that fence, the glass wall.
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B
Sorry.
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C
Oh yeah, my dog might be back soon too.
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B
Oh, good.
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C
And to be close to that and see that it would enhance the value of those out, you know, outfield seats. Right. And it would also cut down on the number of cheap home runs and put more balls in the outfield in play so that the need for. To develop or select guys with the arms like Dave Parker or Roberto Clemente, you know, who can make those throws would become more important. So you'd have the, you know, one of the first things Borgin Sword told me and as we all know, he basically wrote runs the game on the field for mlb. You know, all their, all their surveys said fans want more doubles and triples.
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B
Right?
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C
That's what they want. How are you going to give it to them? Figure out a way. If not this one. I'll take suggestions. See the ball coming off the glass. Play it off the glass. Let's see somebody do what Dave Parker did.
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B
Yeah, I do. I do like that because I think that like there's a lot of. I'm sure there's a lot of things if you change one thing, right. There's unintended consequences. You know, like you wrote about the idea of like having two outfielders instead of three. Right. More outfield grass. That for me, I'm like, well, that would probably disincentivize contact even more. And so you'd have pitchers throwing even harder and trying to get more strikeouts and that might lead to more arm injuries or whatever. Right. But like, yeah, if you, if everything is Fenway park, basically, if every. The green monsters everywhere, that's kind of exciting, right? Like that makes.
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C
Wouldn't be Green Monster esque. You know, all those catches where you see a guy, you know, throwing himself over the wall of whatever height. I mean, I'm not talking about the foul lines. I'm talking about the outfield where. Between the poles. So it's that span where I don't think we need to put it on top of the Green Monster.
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B
Okay, okay, fair enough.
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C
They have to try something different. And if you did it for five years and it changed the thinking about the game and the kind of players who were. The way players are developed, you know, good on that. And then take them down if you want to but do something different that doesn't inherently screw with the game as it don't make it unrecognizable.
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B
Right. Yeah.
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C
I mean, those. Those are plays from the past. When's the last home. What's the last home run? No non home run highlight from a World Series that you can think of.
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B
Does Aaron Judge dropping the ball count?
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C
That's mean.
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B
Why. But it's true. Okay, fine.
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C
Other problem.
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B
But Garrett Cole forgetting to cover first base.
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C
Another problem.
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B
Okay. Anthony Volpe, Skip. Okay. Yeah, I know. I mean, I think that. I think you're right, like, because obviously, Freddie Freeman's home run Right. In game one of the World Series is. Is an indelible moment. Right. You know, a grand slam. You know, when every game is decided in the same fashion. You know, when every game is like. I was. I was at the. I was. I did a story on the Brewers a couple weeks ago, and I was talking to Christian Yellich, their, you know, sort of star outfielder, and he was sor. Like, yeah, man. The playoffs, it's kind of like whoever gets in there and hits home runs, and it's like, if you hit some home runs, you win, and if you don't, you lose. And, like, it's not that simple, but it is that simple, almost. And home runs are. I go back and forth on this because, like, I. It's not random what happens, but it really is random, I guess, at this point. And I don't. I don't.
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C
Here she comes. Oh, she's running. There she is.
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B
There you go. She's doing okay. All right.
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C
Yeah, she's moving like she used to.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Whatever they did, she's better. Thank you.
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B
All right.
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C
Thank you for asking, Andy. That was really nice.
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B
I'm glad that she's doing well. That's great. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I just. I. I think that there is an element of it that is sort of like, we're gonna flip some coins and see who hits the ball over the fence tonight, and that's going to decide who the best team in baseball is. And there is something lost in that.
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C
What should we learn from the brewers there right now?
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B
If you watch baseball every night and if you watch different teams, the fundamentals across the sport clearly are lacking for a lot of clubs. And I think that that is in somewhat. You know, somewhat should be blamed on the teams themselves, but it's also the way players are developed. You know, you got into it writing about how, like, kids play on the showcase circuit and they don't really embrace the team. Concept. You know, I think Joe Torrey spoke to this in the book, you know, and the idea of like, they don't play on team, they show up at these tournaments, they're trying to get noticed. They're like, they're just doing what they need to do to further their careers, which is probably the they're incentivized to make those decisions. But it creates a system where guys don't know who the cutoff man is. They don't, you know, like play good, fundamental baseball. They don't run the bases with the same sort of, you know, gusto that the brewers do. And with Milwaukee, it's like you can see that the reason they are winning is because they know how to play baseball. That is a market inefficiency right now. And I think it's a good thing that other teams are noticing that because baseball is better when it's played well. You know what I mean?
- [22:55]
A
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B
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D
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B
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D
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C
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C
I mean, I think they're a great object. Listen. And maybe when you don't have, you know, the money of the Dodgers or the Yankees or the Mets and you're forced to be more creative in the way you put a team together, you can actually have something like chemistry and admit that it matters. I mean, you know, it's they clearly play well together. They anticipate each other's movement. You can. You can see it on the field. I don't know that anybody anticipated Air Judge would drop that ball. And I'm not pick. I'm not picking on the big guy. I mean, it's a thorough team deficit as far as the Yankees are concerned. And it's. And you know who I blame? I blame Dan Okrid. I blame everything on Dan Okra.
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B
You really went after poor Dan Okra in this book.
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C
Well, he's a friend. He can take. But no, let me run this by you, because this is not something I wrote. And I thought, because I thought of it later. Do you think that because Rotisserie and fantasy sports so much now dictate the thinking of how to win and what's efficient and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And because they could first only measure offensive baseball, I mean, there weren't reliable defensive statistics when he was creating, you know, his Okra and Finokes. I can't help but wonder whether that was the beginning of the end for fundamentals.
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B
It's certainly easier to quantify what someone is doing at the plate just as a hitter versus anything they're doing in the field, because so much of, you know, because one, it's just the sample size is so much more. You have, you know, 600 at bats. That is a lot more indicative of who you are as a player than the number of chances you get in left field. And I think that the folks who. I mean, I want to say the. For everyone, it's. It's. And you explain this so well in the book that, like, everyone who cares about baseball has been affected by, you know, the, the creation of Rotisserie baseball, which was later, you know, became essentially fantasy sports. And. And this sort of atomized way of thinking about the game, like thinking about individual contributions of individual players rather than the team. So the entire sport has, you know, I don't want to say infected, because Dan Okren's not my friend, not because he's done anything wrong. I'm just not going to speak ill of another legend. I think that it's obviously easier to quantify that. And then once you started looking into those numbers, there were obvious inefficiencies within those numbers. You know, and that's. That was Moneyball, right. Is like figuring all that out. It's a lot harder to come up with what is the data? What is the. What are the analytics that demonstrate how the brewers work or, you know, the 2015 royals, you know, who are kind of the last team in that mold to win the World Series that way. And, yeah, I mean, I think that that is certainly part of, if not, you know, the death of fundamentals, at least the decrease in interest in defense across the board.
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C
And in addition, the fact that you can't measure cliches like heart or clutch, you know, and baseball was much more charming to me when you could acknowledge that clutch was a thing. But so I said to my friend Peko Hosoi, who is the creator of the MIT Sports Analytics Lab and the smartest human being I have ever been in proximity to, and she said, that's what everybody's coming to them for and asking for. Now, can you measure grit? How do you measure grit? And, well, one way to do it is to use your eyes, as Dusty Baker said over and over again. But they're actually trying to do it. And she said, yes, there are ways that we can start to do it. At the MIT Sports Analytics Conference that I went to where this came up in a panel, and Bill James opined that they could watch who came into the clubhouse early. And somebody else said, oh, but then you'd have to put cameras in there.
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B
Right.
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C
That, yeah.
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B
Like measuring those sort of qualities, like, that involves almost like that involves essentially even more of a surveillance state. Right.
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C
How do you measure immeasurables? Right. And even the things, you know, luck. How about luck? You know, people don't realize when they say, oh, well, you know, you're not going to send him up because he's, you know, he can't hit this kind of pitch. He can't hit this kind of pitcher. Well, you don't know that. All you know is that nine times out of 10.
- [29:24]
B
Right.
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C
Like Raje Davis in the 2000 nine times out of 10, he is not going to hit a home run off of Aroldus Chapman when he was his youngest, newest self.
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B
Yeah.
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C
But you can't say, and I don't think people at home get this, you cannot say that that means it isn't going to happen that one time. And so if you bet against all of those opportunities, then it's a vote for flatness and for predictability. And as Joe Tory said, you know, and baseball isn't inherently a predictable game.
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B
Right? Right.
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C
So you can't. You can't predict those exceptions, but you have to allow for them. And that's the problem with analytics. It's not that they're not smart. It's not that they're not right about the best path. You know, all those things, they are right. And they're not going away. But they have so limited the texture of the game, so fundamentally altered it, there's no room for the improbable anymore. And so what are you supposed to root for? You can't root for players who are injured because analytics says it's best to throw a ball. Not that you needed analytics to tell you this, but it's best to throw a ball at 104 miles all five times that you can do it before your arm dies. It is a real conundrum. I get that. And changing it. What has to be the reason it has to be people who really love the game and who know the game is because as Peko explained to me, he was almost hysterical. He said, you've got me on my soapbox. The people who often create the algorithms, and certainly true in sports, at high level sports at this point, but throughout our world, the people who are running the way life is in America and around the world today, they don't have what those guys call domain knowledge. They don't know what they're talking about.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And she said, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is they don't think domain knowledge is important. So you have people who are not only not baseball people creating the dynamics for how the game will be played, but they don't understand. You know, how many times did scouts and other people say to me, there was this guy, this little pitcher with a, with the iPad, and I asked him if he'd ever put on a catcher's mitt and he was looked at me like I'm crazy. You know, they don't know what is involved. Do you think they know about how you have to stuff a batter's a catcher's mitt in order to catch a 104 mile an hour fastball? I mean, I don't think so. And she says that, that, that is a profoundly scary thing. She, she regards baseball as the canary in the coal mine, as a warning system. And its great gift to the 21st century as it is now played is showing what happens if you completely surrender what every player and every manager now calls the human element and you surrender completely control to the numbers.
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B
Hold on, I'm going to put what you said into ChatGPT and see what it gets back to me and see if there's.
- [33:00]
C
That'd be interesting.
- [33:04]
B
I'm struck by. You're just thinking. I, I remember several years ago when Rich Hill, who you talked with for the book, when he was, when he was pitching for the Minnesota Twins in The postseason. He did not start in a postseason game against the Astros. They lost the series, and Rich didn't start. And he had pitched very well against them in the postseason in 2017. And the reason he was given that he didn't start was the Astros are a team who hits curveballs well. And Rich's response was, what about my curveball?
- [33:35]
C
You know, God love him.
- [33:37]
B
Yeah. And. And it's one of those things that the influx of information, it's an attempt to find answers to a test that you can't really show up with the answers for, I guess. And part of the like, because, you know, it's not like it's made the game more. We talked about this sometimes on the show. If you were watching a playoff game 15 years ago, you would see a manager make five incredibly obvious mistakes based on the numbers, like, within the first six innings and then the last three innings, you might see 12 mistakes.
- [34:17]
C
Huge.
- [34:18]
B
Like, you know, sort of like, why are you batting that guy there? Why are you not pinch hitting here? You know, all that sort of stuff that would just drive you crazy, and that is completely gone. But it's been replaced by managers who almost seem like they have no autonomy. They're not really within the flow of the game. They're showing up with the answers to the test and trying to manage to that. And there just has to be. It feels like a. Somewhere in between, right? Like, where you can use all this information and still try and win, but also, like, trust. All of your life spent watching this game and being a part of this game to try and win tonight. You know what I mean?
- [34:54]
C
Yeah, I do. I know exactly what you mean. And maybe it requires hiring people and putting them in jobs and saying, you know, use your experience, use your eyes. You know, tell us what you see here, and then maybe check. I mean, Buck Showalter always said. Said to me, you know, I didn't ignore analytics. I would see what my eyes told me, and then I would go check it. And if the analytics in my eyes match, well, then you really have something. Okay, that's. That's fair enough. Somebody at the Astros telling Dusty that his eyes didn't know what they were looking at was a pretty astonishing statement. And if you've been in the game, what, 50 years, 40 years? I mean, he was beside himself by that point. What it does is it precludes imagination, particularly the stationing of players in the place on the diamond where the ball is most likely to be hit. I started out with the Derek Jeter example of the Flip play. Well, it turns out they. Joe Torrey says they actually did practice something like in spring training. But nonetheless, that play was a. The success of that play was based on. And I know lots of people hate Jeter and think he's terribly overrated. He knew his body, he knew the trajectory of the ball. He knew without stopping to think about it because there was no time to stop to think about it, how the play could be made. And he could not have seen that if analytics had had him in a. Sure.
- [36:31]
B
Yeah. If he's in right field in the shift. Yeah, yeah.
- [36:35]
C
So what I should explain that. I'm talking about the play in the 2001 division American League division playoff where Jeremy Giambi is on first base. It's a one nothing Yankee win game and Mike Musina is still on the mound and Torre lets him pitch to a left handed slugger.
- [36:56]
B
You pointed that out in the book. And my brain did explode a little bit thinking about giving up the platoon advantage in a one run game in the seventh. You don't see that's gone, right. For better or worse, that's gone anyway, sorry, continue.
- [37:09]
C
Shane Spencer was playing out there in right field because Paul o' Neal had been somewhat injured. He was also old and you know, not in as good shape as he had been at other points. You know, and he goes and he makes, gets the ball and the carom off that green triangle out at the now defunct Oakland Alameda County Stadium. And he overthrows, he overthrows two cutoff men. And Jeter knows all this, that he hasn't played much right field. Right. So Jeter, because he could see the panoply of the field, I mean he wouldn't. If he had been stuck out in behind second base, he would not have been able to see what he saw that prompted him to tear across the infield between second base and the mound and intercept Spencer's errant throw. That errant in the sense that it went over two guys heads and then backhand it to Posada, who was, you know, still allowed to block the plate. And you know, and inexplicably, and thank God there was no cameras to tell to second guess the umpire. Inexplicably, Jerry Pgiambi did not slide right, which to me thank God he didn't, that we didn't have the technology, this kind of argument. Would he have been safe? Wouldn't he have been safe? Should he have split? Shouldn't he have slid? You know, this is the deliciousness of the game that I miss. You Know, we still had the shift when I was started working on this book. Yeah. Just kept thinking, oh, and Bregman, you talk to me about how much it precludes imagination. And just when you go out to play and you've got this card telling you how many paces off third base or how deep you have to be, your mind isn't free or encouraged to come up with other solutions that you're capable of because after all, you're one of the best baseball players in the world.
- [39:18]
B
Yeah, yeah. And you're also talking about two players who have never been put in a position to try and think their way out of things because they've been given the answers to the test at every stage of development. You mentioned, you know, kind of when you started this project. That was before they. The rules were changed, right?
- [39:36]
C
Yes.
- [39:37]
B
And added the pitch clock, changing the shift, you know, making the bases bigger. How much did those changes kind of alter the scope of what you were writing?
- [39:46]
C
Completely.
- [39:48]
B
I suspected as much.
- [39:50]
C
You remember that in the fall of 2020, the pandemic is still. All the headlines were, baseball's dead, Baseball's broken. The Times had an editorial on the op ed page and opening day 22, you know, federalized baseball. Now, I started working on this the day that Theo Epstein was hired to be the Azar of saving baseball. And, you know, so I was working and working and working and talking with people, and I was prepared to take this unbelievably dire prognosis and see what I could do with it. So I reported all through 21 and all through 22. And I see that these rules changes are coming, and that's going to obviate half my reporting and anything I'd already written. So I'm cursing Theo. Right. So I started all over in January 23rd to say, okay, so now the question is, how much do these rules changes work? How much has it improved the game? Do they work? Do they need to go farther? What can I do to help? And so I went all the way through 23 season tracing that. I am utterly convinced that the Ghost Runner is an abomination on humankind. I don't care. I don't care how, how many miles they have to fly that night. Because you know why? Because I stopped to do the math and to figure out how many extra games, extra inning games actually go though that far. And those are by. We all know that they're, you know, rare. Most extra inning games by a lot end in the 10th inning.
- [41:38]
B
Yeah.
- [41:38]
C
So it was Roger Angel's dying Please get rid of the. Yeah, the ghost runner. And the reason why. It's one more way in which Major League baseball has clumsily misread the essence of the game. You didn't get to go to second base for no reason. You had to earn it. It's sort of an old fashioned American concept. You earned your way around the bases and giving that kind of advantage. Or Ron Washington said the same thing about the new bigger bases. Giving those advantages rather than teaching people how to play in those situations has become routine. My compromise is let it go through to 13 innings, you know, or until gone through the lineup another time. Give them the chance. Give baseball a chance to end the way baseball is supposed to end.
- [42:46]
B
Yeah.
- [42:47]
C
It still precludes Marichal and Warren Spawn. You know, it precludes all sorts of great things that the Dan Barry book about the 33 inning game in Pawtucket. Those parts of baseball history are the reason people come to the ballpark.
- [43:05]
B
Right? Right.
- [43:06]
C
To see something extraordinary. And every which way that the game has evolved. It's evolved to preclude those. To preclude the extraordinary.
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Had the time of my life. Hey, I never felt this way before.
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- [44:43]
B
I am rooting for myself at all times. The only games I really cover at the games are in the postseason where they don't have the Ghost Runner. So I think they should get rid of it during the regular season. Just so the other beat writers have to suffer through, you know, games that go an extra hour. I think they should just, you know, they should continue to feel the pain that I felt during my decade on the beat. So I'm with you.
- [45:04]
C
Yeah, I felt it. Yeah.
- [45:05]
B
You know.
- [45:06]
C
You know, I understand about the travel. I get it. Maybe the schedule needs to be shorter. Right. I do not agree with Rob Manford's recent solution to completely tear up what's left of the American National League and create conferences. I understand why it's logical. I understand why it makes sense, but not for baseball.
- [45:32]
B
Steven Nesbitt at the Athletic did a realignment sort of map recently that was. Had some issues, but was, like, much better than the one Major League Baseball has been floating, you know, like, it moved it basically. It created, like, it moved the Braves, the Marlins, the Nashville franchise and the Rays or like the NL Southeast or something, and moved the Pirates to the NL east, where they should be. Anyway.
- [45:58]
C
Anyway. Right.
- [45:59]
B
And so it, like, you looked at it and it was sort of a map where you're like, you know what? That's fine. If you're gonna have to do, you know, eight divisions, this is fine. Whereas the one Major League Baseball has put out with, like, the Mets, Yankees, Phillies and Red Sox all in one division is just horrifying for a variety of reasons. You know, in kind of a bigger. A lot of people who listen to the show are baseball fans, but we also have a lot of, like, writers who check in. And you've accomplished so much in your career. I mean, you've. You've done books that I think. I mean, have stood the test of time, you know, like, have. Are still incredibly relevant, still incredibly vibrant and stuff that has really lasted. And I guess if you, as someone who was a daily sports writer, you know, at the Washington Post, and made the leap into doing bigger projects, like, what sort of, you know, advice or anything do you have to offer for folks who are, you know, maybe considering taking on something of that magnitude of doing a book, of doing something bigger than just kind of the work that they do every day?
- [47:04]
C
Prepare to be suicidal. Smith used to say, you know, there's something about writing an 800 word short story seven times a week back when columnists wrote every day. You know, and if you write four stinkers, well, you got three more chances to make it good.
- [47:24]
B
Yeah.
- [47:25]
C
And you don't really have that chance anymore, and certainly not when you're doing a long project. I mean, this is an astonishing you know, and in some ways it's so far lovely moment for me because, you know, you're alone with this thing for four years. It's like maybe it's really bad. Maybe I forgot how to write. Maybe I got the whole thing wrong. It's kind of terrifying. There were days I would kill to have a deadline that, you know, give me your best 16 inches back when we measured inches and, and call it a day. And then this particular case, because I was trying to be current, I was basically writing, running on a 300 page book, updating the statistics and updating the more serious changes of rule changes and things like that. I thank God nobody really important. Better not say that some people have died, but thank God nobody really major character hasn't dropped dead or been, you know, in some way besmirched. The other thing about it that was so great, Andy, I love these people.
- [48:45]
B
Yeah, that comes through.
- [48:46]
C
That comes through in the book and their wealth of knowledge. The fact that so much of it is going to waste is really acutely painful to me. You know, the guy who suggested the two outfielders was being, I think, mirthful, but he was also recognizing there was a, you know, and he's a, you know, major, major analytics dude and the analytics dude, them. But he also wrecked whether it would work or not or how it would play out. You know, it's hard to say exactly, but he was recognizing that there was something wrong with the way the game was played. Now, now, you know, this was a, an antidote, a correction to what's become. Is static mean it doesn't change or does it mean it changes all the time?
- [49:36]
B
I think static means it does not change.
- [49:39]
C
Thank you. That's become way too static. You know, I think that the clock was inevitable and it was a really good decision. I would like to see further studies. There's. There was one that was published after the first year of the pitch club.
- [49:52]
B
Yeah.
- [49:52]
C
About whether it was affecting pitching arms or how it was and whether there were more injuries. God knows the injury onslaught has not lessened or slackened in the least. Like I said, you know, if you, if they look at the Dodgers, I mean, you want to pick on Aaron Judge? How about the Dodgers record with his pitching staff this year?
- [50:15]
B
Well, you have to remember the Dodgers have come up with this incredible plan. Their theory is that every pitcher is going to get hurt. So let's acquire pitchers who are already hurt.
- [50:29]
C
Do you know how many that they've paid? Like I think something like $63 million to 38 pitchers already.
- [50:35]
B
I mean, but, like, legitimately, they're, they're. They believe that there is a, you know, market efficiency or whatever. Like, they can get a deal on Tyler Glass now or Blake Snell as compared to going after Corbin Burns, because they're all going to get hurt anyway. Right. And so, like, it's kind of a fatalist way of looking at it. You know, cynical is not the right word because it's not cynical, but it's like, it's. It's basically like these guys are going to break. Let's get guys who are just as good as the guys who aren't broken yet, but they're already sort of, you know, fragile.
- [51:08]
C
I guess we take the. We take the financial advantage. And if he can't and if he has to have a second one.
- [51:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's an interesting gambit that. Look, they won the World Series last year, right. So, like, it's hard to argue with the results, but you're seeing the limitations of the strategy are very clear, and I don't. And you see kind of a different version of that with the Mets, where David Stearns, you know, is kind of refusing to give out big market deals to any sort of starting pitcher. Right. And so it's like, what is it? Clearly, starting pitching is incredibly valuable. And having, you know, a Tarek Skubal or a Paul Skeens is like, you know, can. Well, for the Pirate, can't really change the course of your franchise because the Pirates are going nowhere. But, like, clearly. Right. That's like, one of the most valuable things. So why is no one paying for it? You know, why is no one willing to or so few teams willing.
- [52:09]
C
Tom Glavin thinks it's a strategy to, you know, that bring down the cost of starting pitching is, you know, that's why they don't care about the way pitching is now structured with so many relief pitchers.
- [52:21]
B
Well, definitely, it was in arbitration.
- [52:24]
C
Conspiracy theory about that.
- [52:26]
B
Yes. Yes.
- [52:27]
C
And he's a very smart guy.
- [52:29]
B
Right. So, I mean, I, I do think with arbitration, like, that is something that was part of kind of, you know, for some of these teams that don't like to spend money that that is baked into what they're deciding to do because the raises are based on, like, you know, the counting stats of how many starts you. Many innings you threw. And if you're being used as an. Oh, you know, with an opener in front of you, that changes that. And so. Yeah.
- [52:51]
C
But I just want to say to my own defense, where I think it's underestimated. What it's done to the style of play is palpable because it's measurable. Right. We all know how many bases were stolen and how many home runs, how many strikeouts and exit VOs and blah, blah, blah, blah. What about the effect on the fans? What about the effect on people who loved the game and who don't want to root for statistics? I really think the essential nature of the game is inimical to this in a way others aren't. Jim Cott told me about his dad driving 300 miles on the one day off a week he had to go to that horrible mistake by the lake in Cleveland to see a double header and, you know, no pitch clock. They could have gone other ways between the Yankees and the Indians when they were still Indians. Imagine loving baseball that much. I mean, that was a story. Baseball's essence was that it created narratives. And narratives are something you can pass down, you know, and you can tell your kid about or your buddy about. I saw, you know, the time that Greg Maddox finally struck out Tony Gwynn. There are all those things that were at play that aren't anymore. So there's something about its essential makeup that I think. And it's given fans less to root for. Do you think anybody's ever gonna go out and see another perfect game? I mean, a 20 strikeout game?
- [54:44]
B
I mean, I think you'll see a 20 strikeout game, but that's just because no one can make contact. But the perfect game. Yeah. Like that concept is. I will be very surprised when I see another one, I guess.
- [54:55]
C
You know, I was talking to Rich Hill about that, obviously, and. And I imagine you spoke to Clayton Kershaw about it, but. And I asked Dave Roberts, you know, but what was the cost to the game? What if instead of reflexively taking Clayton Kershaw out after seven innings of his first start of 2022, middle of a perfect game, because he had been injured before, so it's prudent, completely understandable what he decided. But what if the headline, instead of Kershaw makes first start pitches seven innings. What if it's instead Clayton Kershaw, you know, the greatest pitcher of his generation, who had accomplished virtually everything else that this industry and this sport considers supreme, was allowed to and, you know, and was able to pitch a perfect game in his first time back on a mound since September? Was it September or October 2021?
- [55:59]
B
I think it was like October 1st. He semi blew out in 2021. Yeah.
- [56:04]
C
Wouldn't that be a reason to want to go to the ballpark. Wouldn't that give an audience reason to say, yeah, maybe I will go to go out and see a baseball game. By diminishing or deleting even opportunities for greatness, you also diminish, I think, the appeal of the game and therefore, fan base.
- [56:28]
B
Yeah. It probably would have helped me sell more books.
- [56:31]
C
So I think that's what this is all about.
- [56:34]
B
I mean, at the end of the day.
- [56:35]
C
At the end of the day.
- [56:39]
B
Well, Jane, thank you so much for your time. This was really, again, just an honor. You are an absolute legend.
- [56:45]
C
Don't do that.
- [56:47]
B
It's true.
- [56:48]
C
It's true.
- [56:50]
B
The book is Make Me commissioner. I Know what's wrong with baseball and how to fix it. It's out September 9th. Thank you, Jane.
- [56:57]
C
Again, I have one question.
- [56:59]
B
Yes?
- [57:00]
C
Do I get your vote?
- [57:01]
B
Four, Commissioner? Oh, of course. Yeah. If I'm in charge.
- [57:05]
C
Yeah. Yeah, sure. There you go.
- [57:08]
B
Although, more, I don't know. Morgan did bring in the. The pitch clock. So you're gonna, like. I. It's a. I might have to flip.
- [57:15]
C
Away if I have to defer to somebody.
- [57:19]
B
No, you've got my vote. A hundred percent.
- [57:22]
C
I thought he was incredibly thoughtful and interesting and caring about. You know, he's not one of those people who don't care about the game for sure.
- [57:32]
B
Well, thank you again for the time. This was wonderful.
- [57:34]
C
Take good care. I loved your book.
- [57:36]
B
Oh, thank you.
- [57:37]
C
That's.
- [57:37]
B
That's very flattering.
- [57:38]
C
Didn't I steal copiously?
- [57:42]
B
It was. It was very helpful. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
- [57:45]
C
Thanks, Andy. I'll talk to you again.
- [57:55]
B
I was very wrong.
- [58:05]
D
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