The Roundtable | How baseball has changed in the last 10 years

Summary

The Windup: The Roundtable | How Baseball Has Changed in the Last 10 Years

Episode 193 | November 17, 2025
Hosts: Grant Brisbee, Andy McCullough, Sam Miller
Podcast: The Windup: A Show About Baseball (The Athletic)

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Windup Roundtable features Grant Brisbee, Andy McCullough, and Sam Miller diving deep into how Major League Baseball has transformed over the last decade. Using a prompt that Andy posed to executives at the MLB GM Meetings—“What’s something you believed about baseball ten years ago that you no longer believe to be true?”—the trio discusses shifts in pitching and hitting paradigms, the mythology versus reality of "tanking," how organizational development and tech have re-shaped competitive advantage, and more. Along the way, they reminisce about famed agent Scott Boras’s pun-filled press conferences and reflect on changes in baseball writing culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Inside the MLB GM Meetings & Scott Boras’s Annual Show

[03:02–11:12]

• Andy recounts his recent trip to the GM meetings in Las Vegas, observing how they’ve changed from intimate, productive gatherings to less accessible, Vegas-flavored events:

  “It just feels more like the winter meetings now. So, I don’t know. I’ll be curious to see how well attended it is in future years.” – Andy McCullough, [06:14]

• The group riffs on Scott Boras’s infamous pun-heavy media performances, with Sam expressing both disdain and fascination:

  “It’s just so poorly executed. The wordplay is as bad as wordplay gets, and now he’s doing alliteration... I’ve said before that alliteration is actually the last refuge of the poor word player.” – Sam Miller, [08:36]

• Andy admits he enjoys Boras’s schtick for the entertainment value, even if the content means little for actual baseball news:

  “I was laughing so hard people were turning around to look at me, and I was confused why other people weren’t laughing. He’s doing… a comedy show.” – Andy McCullough, [10:25]

2. How Has Baseball Actually Changed? Executives’ Answers and the Hosts’ Reflections

[18:13–24:10]

• Andy sets up the main theme by sharing his prompt to MLB executives—what beliefs have fundamentally shifted in the last decade? He asks the hosts for their answers:

  “Is there something you believed about baseball ten years ago that you no longer believe to be true?” – Andy McCullough, [18:28]

a) The Pitcher-Hitter Power Shift & Strikeouts

[19:40–24:10]

• Grant:
  Used to see every swing-and-miss as a hitter failing. Now, it's clear many misses are simply due to impossible-to-hit pitches.

  “There are pitches that a pitcher can execute; you just can’t blame the hitter... If a pitcher can execute that, nothing the hitter can do.” – Grant Brisbee, [19:40]

• Sam:
  Adds nuance about the evolution of how strikeouts are perceived and the hidden virtue of accepting some swings and misses:

  “The benefits you get from allowing swing and miss accrue in other ways... [Luis Arraez] crossed this threshold where all of a sudden he wasn’t striking out enough. Some strikeouts are part of a healthy ecosystem. It’s like bacteria in your gut.” – Sam Miller, [21:36]

• They invoke the “missing a plane” corollary:

  “If you never miss a plane, you’re getting to the airport too early. If you never get caught stealing, you’re not stealing enough. And if you never strike out, you’re not making good swing decisions.” – Sam Miller and Andy McCullough, [22:54]

3. The Rise and Fall of “Tanking” and Organizational Advantage Myths

[24:10–29:09]

• Sam:
  Reflects on the obsession with “the new Moneyball” being tanking around 2015, only to realize now that tanking isn’t the surefire rebuild it was made out to be:

  “It just turns out that tanking’s not that effective. The DePodesta Browns didn’t get good, the 76ers didn’t get good enough... It just doesn’t have a plan to get out of their rebuild.” – Sam Miller, [27:08]

• Andy:
  Explains that what truly separated the Astros and Cubs wasn’t tanking per se, but scouting, international signings, and especially innovation in pitching development:

  “The thing that sustained [the Astros] was their pitching development... The Astros were really the first team that took all of these disparate elements of pitch shaping, Trackman, and all that, and built it at scale.” – Andy McCullough, [29:09]

4. How Competitive Windows, Player Development, and Fortune Intersect

[32:48–37:50]

• Discussion of how success for the Cubs and Astros was as much about luck (drafting the right future stars) as about process. The hosts stress that execution and good fortune can’t always be replicated by “copying” a rebuild:

  “Once they happen, it’s easy to say that happened because of good process, but in the absence of that, it’s not necessarily the absence of good process. It could just be baseball crap that happened to that team.” – Grant Brisbee, [36:32]

5. Diminishing Returns of “Rebuilds” & The Impact of Modern Player Development

[38:52–39:35]

• Teams like the Dodgers and Brewers successfully develop talent without top picks, leveling the field and challenging the old tanking model:

  “Good teams have figured out some of the tech stuff; just acquiring the best players in the draft for three or four years isn’t enough.” – Andy McCullough, [32:48]

6. Baseball’s Cultural Memory and the Challenges of Writing Its History

[39:35–43:29]

• The group debates whether scandals (Astros’ sign stealing) will fade in collective memory and reflect on the changing landscape of sports history and publishing, especially regarding “small window” success stories (e.g., Kansas City Royals).
• Grant shares a darkly comedic anecdote about pitching a baseball history book, only to be told, “No, but seriously, have you thought about a book that would sell?” [43:11]

7. Old Dogmas in Team Building & the Fallacy of the Safe Free Agent

[43:31–47:19]

• Andy:
  Admits a change of heart: he no longer believes in aggressively pursuing “mid-tier” free agents, arguing teams should either sign elite talent or avoid risky multi-year deals:

  “You should really probably only be fishing in the top end of that pool if you’re doing multi-year agreements… Those deals just tend not to work.” – Andy McCullough, [43:31]

• Sam:
  Counters that teams sign solid but unspectacular veterans as insurance, but it rarely produces more security than just going with a rookie or internal option.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the evolution of pitching dominance:

  “If a pitcher can execute [that slider], nothing the hitter could do.” – Grant Brisbee, [19:40]

• On Scott Boras:

  “Watching them die is cringe comedy. And I can’t do cringe comedy.” – Sam Miller, [09:20]

• On tanking:

  “It just turns out that tanking’s not that effective. It’s way less effective than we thought it was.” – Sam Miller, [27:08]

• On the Astros’ real legacy:

  “Their pitching dev isn’t going to be their legacy, but it’s the thing that they did that changed the sport more.” – Andy McCullough, [31:32]

• On failed writing trends:

  “Fake dialogue worked so well and then suddenly it didn’t... there was really something in the collapse of that trend that feels like relevant to like Hypercolor T-shirts.” – Sam Miller, [48:07]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:46–03:15: Hosts check in, Andy recaps his travel ordeal to GM meetings
• 03:02–11:12: GM Meetings’ new vibe; Scott Boras’s annual press conference skits
• 18:13–24:10: Central question: What has fundamentally changed in MLB in a decade?
• 24:10–29:09: Tanking: From market inefficiency to diminished returns
• 32:48–37:50: The fine line between luck, process, and repeating success
• 39:35–43:29: Baseball’s memory, writing history, and the nostalgia gap for teams like the Royals
• 43:31–47:19: Free agent philosophies and the myth of the safe “mid-tier” signing
• 47:19–49:44: The rise and fall of the "fake dialogue" baseball writing trend

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Conclusion

“Ten years ago, we had all these truisms… now everything feels so much more context-dependent and complicated.”
The hosts agree: The last decade in baseball has been marked by a shift away from rigid dogmas (“just do Moneyball,” “just tank,” “just lower strikeouts”) towards a new understanding that winning in MLB now demands technological proficiency, player development at all levels, and often just a bit of unpredictable luck.

For listeners:
If you want an insightful but humorous tour of how baseball’s sacred cows have been upended—and what, if anything, remains timeless in team building, fandom, and the writing about both—this is an engaging, idea-rich episode.

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Next episode returns after Thanksgiving.

Transcript

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[C]

Welcome to episode number 193 of the Roundtable. Grant Brisby here with Andy McCullough and Sam Miller. Let's start with Sam today. Sam, how you doing today?

[D]

Grateful to be started with.

[C]

Well, like, because Andy was the one that's. He wasn't here yesterday. He had the. He had the. Yesterday he was in airport limbo. Airport purgatory. He has come back from Las Vegas since. Andy, how are you doing today?

[E]

I'm okay. I'm tired. I. Yeah, I'm tired. I don't know if I had. Yesterday, I was just tired.

[C]

Not yesterday, but Monday when we.

[E]

Monday. Yeah, my flight got canceled, so. Yeah, I got. Yeah, I got caught in the. Yeah, I was supposed to be able to record and then I ended up having to fly from New York to Seattle to get to Las Vegas.

[C]

That doesn't make sense. It's not even on the. I mean, it's kind of on the way, but I. I'll Just say it's not on the way.

[E]

It's like, yeah, we. We turned left, and we're like, oh, no, we've gone too far left. We must go right.

[D]

You get extra points if you're playing Ticket to Ride.

[C]

I know exactly what he's talking about. Are you Ticket to the Ride Family, Sam.

[D]

Ticket to Ride couple. My daughter's not into it, but my wife and I are.

[C]

Okay.

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

Our family. And do you go coast to coast? Like, are you. Is that. Does that tickle you? Even if you know that it's not going to let you win. Are you going coast to coast?

[D]

I always win.

[E]

Fair enough.

[B]

Fair enough.

[C]

Yeah, I guess. I guess that is the dynamic when you're a genius like you and I. Anyways, Andy, it's a board game. It's great. Andy, you went to the GM meetings. You saw GMs. You saw both GS, you saw Ms. What are your takeaways?

[E]

I saw Pose. I saw Bose. I even saw at least one cbo. Is Craig Rezero the only chief baseball officer? I'm trying. We got to figure that out.

[C]

There's a cbo?

[D]

Does he really go by his title is cbo? Because it does sound. It sort of sounds like an abbreviation of his name.

[E]

Yes, I might. My only thought is, I'm not totally sure, but I do know that Hyam Bloom was the cbo, but Hyam Bloom is also cb. Who can say?

[D]

I feel like CBO could have been Craig Breslow's locker, you know, clubhouse nickname.

[C]

That's what I'm calling him right now.

[E]

Yes. Okay. According. Yeah, according to Wikipedia, Craig Breslow is this the chief baseball officer of the Red Sox. And I believe every. Now, there's also. Derek Falvi is the Po Bobo. He's the president of baseball operations and business operations.

[D]

So.

[C]

What is that again? Say that one more time.

[E]

Po Bobo.

[C]

Satan affiliate accent.

[E]

Yeah, When I grow up, dog, I'm getting into baseball, and I'm gonna be one of them PO Bows.

[C]

That was better than expected.

[E]

Thank you. Yeah. What did I see at the GM meetings? I have a thought about the GM meetings. I bet you Mark Kurig will agree with this when he sees all the expense reports for the reporters there. We. We don't need to attend the GM meetings. Send Jeff Passon, Ken Rosenthal, and John Heyman. Send them as pool reporters. The industry, they can tell us what's going on, and the rest of us will just work off it. We don't. We don't all need to be there. They're the only three guys we need. That's my personal opinion.

[C]

I've heard that same opinion from multiple people. So you are not alone.

[D]

Has it always been this well attended by the media scrum? Because it's never been newsworthy. It's never been.

[E]

Yeah, well, it used to be, you know, so it vacillates from. In time.

[D]

And I'm.

[E]

And I fear that it's going to continue to be kind of less productive, if only because I believe it's going to be in love Las Vegas for a little while, moving forward. It's supposed to be in Las Vegas again next year. Do you know that award show that Roy Wood and Mookie Betts hosted that everyone talked about all week? Well, they're trying to make a big deal out of that, and by God, it's succeeding. So the show is set in Vegas, and so they've kind of attached the GM meetings to it. But all this is to say that the GM meetings used to be at kind of like a resort in Scottsdale or resort in Carlsbad. And it was a little bit more of a contained environment where, like, you could bump into, you know, an AGM getting coffee, or it was easier to meet up with people. And, you know, now it's become. In Vegas, it's a little bit more like the winter meetings, where, you know, like, some teams aren't even staying, you know, at the hotel. You know, they're doing meetings off site because they want to draw less attention. And, you know, you're basically.

[C]

The Rockies are still driving there.

[E]

You know, you're. Instead of being in, like, kind of a. Like a hotel lobby, you know, where like, a bunch of people from baseball are gathered. You're on a casino floor, you know, and it's. And. And like, there's just, you know, people were there vacationing and stuff, having a good time. So it's just. It just was less productive, I would say.

[C]

Was there a lot of gambling going on, Andy?

[E]

I didn't gamble at all.

[C]

No, but I mean, just in general, baseball, just get a bunch of baseball together, see what. See what the gambling brings out. Sounds like fun.

[E]

I mean, I don't know, maybe I talked to a couple baseball folks who were like, oh, I lost 50 bucks, you know, shooting dice last night. But, like, it's a casino. There's just tons of people there. Like, it's not just. The thing about the GM meetings is it used to be just like a sort of smaller, more intimate gathering where you actually felt like you Know, you could interact with folks, and you weren't just sort of like sprinting after people as they, you know. It just feels more like the winter meetings now. So, I don't know. I'll be curious to see how. How well attended it is in future years.

[C]

Were you there for the state of the Boris?

[E]

I never missed the state of the Boris. It's. It's his Super Bowl. It's my Super Bowl. I think that the haters just need to.

[D]

I hate it.

[E]

Cram it. They need to cram it. He's a command performance. What does Cody Bellinger have to do with Top Gun? No idea. Beantown is not related to coffee. Doesn't stop him. Imai. The executives are saying, oh, my. I mean, he's great alliteration for Pete Alonso. Just.

[C]

That was the one that got me. That. That's where, you know, that this new. This old dog's got some new tricks.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

I mean, look, I. I really enjoy it. I understand why fans. Some fans kind of hate it. It's. It's really. It's. Yeah, I. I'm. I'm always curious to see, like, what's he going to do next? And, you know, saying that Cody Bellinger is like a Windy City Wolf man. You didn't have that on your bingo card. And that's what it's all about.

[C]

Those are like song lyrics, right? And you. You ask the. The songwriter, you say, what.

[D]

What.

[C]

What is a Windy City wolfman? And you go, man, I don't know. It just sings and it does. Like Windy City Wolfman. Those are words that haven't gone together, but should have. So I'm on team Andy here, I think. Sam, why do you hate it? This is.

[B]

This is life.

[D]

Well, it's so bad. It's just so poorly executed, you know, like, the wordplay is as bad as wordplay gets. And now he's doing alliteration. I've said before that alliteration is actually the last refuge of the poor word player. There's no real cleverness to alliteration at all. So when you can't think of a decent pun for your headline, you know, finally you give up and do alliteration. So I don't know what. I've never been clear on what he's. What bit he's doing, but I do think he's proud of these jokes.

[E]

He's very proud of them. Yes.

[D]

And watching them die is cringe comedy. And I can't do cringe comedy. I don't like cringe comedy. I don't like watching, you know, people, like, yeah, it makes me uncomfortable.

[E]

It's a weird environment in that there's kind of like, cuz look, people are there doing their jobs, you know, and like, I'm sort of in this weird, you know, professional position where, like, I don't really have to ask Scott questions in this setting and then, like, write it up. Then again, no one really has to do that because you won't believe this. He thinks there's going to be a robust market for Pete Alonso. You know what I mean? Like, it's not. Like, at one point a reporter came up to me and was like, why are we writing about this? And I was like, I don't know, it's kind of fun, you know. But anyway, like, I usually am in the back with Ken Rosenthal and, you know, other folks, you know, kind of filter through and we're just like, grading the puns, you know, And I'm. I was laughing so hard that people were turning around to look at me, and I was confused why other people weren't laughing.

[C]

Like.

[E]

Like, he's do. Like, this is not a press conference. This is a comedy show. Like, and it's just like, why? And you know, he'll ask, you know, he does the alliteration about Pete Alonso and then gets like a dead serious question about Pete Alonso's defensive regression. That's for a different venue.

[C]

He will not repeat that.

[D]

You know, see that right there, that grant, what you just did is better than his entire year's prep for this produces for even a fleeting moment, like when Andy says that he's grading. The puns, they're all Fs. It would be okay if there were some A, some B, some Ds.

[E]

Oh, that.

[D]

I mean, they're all the worst. I would say so bad.

[E]

Comparing the yoke of the qualifying offer to the death of Anthony Edwards character Goose in the hit film Top Gun. That's not an F, baby.

[C]

You know, I'm not in a position, never have been in a position to need an agent in my life, but one day, you know, if my career goes in a certain direction, I would like someone as competent and as good at his job as Scott Boris.

[E]

Right.

[C]

I think we can agree that he gets good money for his clients, but I'm rethinking about the agent I would get. Obviously, Boris wouldn't represent me. I think I would now go based on this. I would go with Eric Stephen with a head injury, like, because that's basically what Scott Boris is. Derek Stephen covers the Dodgers A Good friend, but he's a pun master. I feel like Scott Boris apprenticed with him for like a week and then got kicked out. Kick off the, the monastery. It's like, no, you're too bad. And now he's. But I think it's a gift. I think it's perfect.

[D]

I think it's like a guy who's really good at one thing and thinks that he's therefore good at everything and he's on our turf doing really bad work.

[C]

That's our whole. That's our whole society, man, is people thinking they're good at stuff. I mean, we think that we're good at talking, you know, extemporaneously for like 45 minutes. I'm. We're not good at that.

[D]

I think I'm pretty good at it.

[C]

Okay, False modesty, Sam.

[E]

False modesty, Sam. Get your license and go steal some of his clients and get up there, start your own agency, the Pebble Hunting Agency. And we're here with, you know, Tucapita Marcano or whoever else you can get to start and sell these guys.

[C]

What's the next escalation we've got? So if you want to out Boris, Boris, but you can't just go out there with puns. Do you have to stand in front of the scrum and like pretend that you can see through time and like you're having visions, religious awakening or something?

[E]

I think it's doing basically a Gallagher esque display where you are just hitting, you know, fruit into the reporters.

[D]

Do you know about the Boris plane thing from the 1980s? Bill Cottle was one of his first clients. And Bill Cottle was a, you know, top relief pitcher. And I, I might have the details slightly wrong, but I think he was like the Blue Jays top reliever. But he wasn't getting saves or he'd lost the closer job or something like that. And Peter Gammons reported that Scott Boris had had hired a plane to fly above the stadium trailing a banner that said give Cottle the ball. Something like that, which is a, like, pretty goofy stunt. And I found that article and mentioned it in a Scott Bo in a thing I wrote about Scott Boris's first negotiations on behalf of Bill Cottle for Baseball Perspectives. Many decades later, Scott Boris called me up to talk about that article, complained about some little editorial note in it, didn't mention the banner, so on and so forth. A couple years later, I wrote a piece for ESPN the Magazine about Scott Boris and Jose Fernandez innings limits and mentioned the banner again. And this time he called me up and said, I never did that. That makes me look stupid. And he was quite disappointed that this story about him being goofy and kind of, like, out of line, unprofessional was being, you know, published in a national magazine. And I felt bad, but I said, I've. I mean, I've said I. You've already. We've already talked about articles where I've mentioned this, and you didn't say it. So anyway, I don't remember what the outcome of that was. But the Scott Borris escalation has maybe been going on for decades, or maybe it hasn't. It's unclear whether this all started in 1985 or not.

[C]

I think we could do a whole episode on funny people who have called us to question our writing in reporting. I've got my. I think my best is Bob Costas. He didn't like the way I characterized Faribaul, and he left a message voicemail. And I did not respond to it because it scared the hell out of me. It was like 2011. So I was just a small bean. But Andy, who's. Who. Who's chewed you out? That's funny.

[E]

I mean, at one point, I was talking to an executive this postseason, and I was. We were just kind of telling funny stories, and he was like, you know, in all of your funny stories, people hate you. And I was like, yeah, I tend to. I tend to upset people, I guess. I don't know. I mean, I love getting a phone call from, you know, Scott after a story because he'll often say interesting things, and then you'll talk for two hours about a variety of other topics and stuff like that. I find him to be just a very fascinating individual. I think he's a person who has really, like, created his own reality for his clients. And oftentimes that reality becomes actual actuality. You know, I find that sort of skill to be quite interesting.

[C]

But you've never been called up by Joan Rivers or something?

[E]

Joan Rivers? No.

[C]

Yeah.

[E]

No, I've never gotten a nasty call.

[C]

Fair enough. I would just like to point out to the listeners that there's been about 10 minutes deleted from this podcast, as Andy did name someone and talked very lucidly about it. But that's all for us now. Not you.

[D]

Telling the story of the guy who got angry at something you said about him is just inviting the same person to come back angry again. Like, why would you poke the bear that already has clawed at you?

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[C]

Andy, you've been a busy little bee, though. Even though the access hasn't quite been there for the gym meetings, you've still been asking a question and you posed this question to Sam and I. You wrote about this question. I'm very excited to read about the article. What's the question?

[E]

We were trying to think of ways to write about, you know, Paul DiPodesta's return to baseball. Right. And so we thought it'd be interesting when you have time with the other executives, you know, to ask, kind of try and get a sense of like, how different the game is in, you know, how the game has changed in the past 10 years. And I think we all kind of know the basic contours of it, like there's a pitch clock now, you know, that type of stuff. But you know, I was basically asking all the executives who, you know, kind of had time was like, is there something you believed about baseball 10 years ago that you no longer believe to be true? And the answers were pretty interesting. There wasn't anything I would say was like shocking, but it was a good way to sort of just kind of chart like the evolution of the game in this past decade, which, you know, as we talked about like last week or whenever it was when we talked about the deep test Iron Grant mentioned, you know, like, 2016 is, like, when a lot of stuff started to change in baseball. And so I guess what I was curious is, like, when I posed that question to you guys, like, what immediately comes to mind is a thing that you were like, oh, yeah, this is like a truism in baseball. And now it's just, like, completely off the map.

[C]

I will start and I will say that it used to be for the first 35 years of my life that when I saw a hitter swing and missed, I said that hitter swing and missed because of something he did wrong. I put the blame on the hitter. In 2015, he didn't execute. He had the wrong game plan going into that pitch. You know, next time he'll have to be better than the pitcher. And now it's. There is. There are pitches that a pitcher can execute. You just can't blame the hitter. If you're geared up for to hit your pitch, to hit a mistake that there are pitches that are going to look like that mistake until the last second. If a pitcher can execute that, nothing the hitter could do. It'd been a shift for how I've watched the game and reacted to hitters waving. And I'm thinking, like, in my mind's eye, I'm thinking about that slider that is. It hits the box outside of the box by, you know, six inches or whatever. That's the most unhittable pitch I've ever seen. Every time I see a slider 6 inches outside the bottom corner of a box, it's like, what? So that's my answer is that pitchers, maybe they've always had the upper hand, but I recognize it now more often.

[D]

Yeah, I think there's two parts of that, too. One is that I think we have a better appreciation for just how unhittable some, some pitches are. And if you tried to hit every pitch, you would probably be ruining, you know, any chance you had to do damage on the other pitches. If you were protecting against the impossible to hit slider on the, the, the corner, then you're giving up too much of your offensive approach. And then the other thing is that I guess it's related to that, but that the value, the benefits that you get from allowing swing and miss accrue in other ways. And so it's not really the hitter's goal to never swing and miss. Their goal is to take swings that will, in fact, sometimes miss. That's like, that's your range and we probably saw the best example of it, like, ever. Like the. That. That the don't strike out strategy is archaic. With Luis Arise this year, who was accomplishing historic feats of not striking out. Like, truly, like, never thought you'd see a guy not strike out the way that Luisa Rise doesn't strike out. It felt like he was chasing that in a way, like he was accomplishing records and that this was like something that he prioritized. He was incentivized to keep going further. The less he struck out, the worse he got as a hitter. Like, he. He crossed this threshold where all of a sudden he wasn't striking out enough. And you could see it in his inability to do damage on pitches in the middle of the zone, on his tendency to put balls in play that he, you know, probably was better off swinging and missing at. And that was, I think, the first time I really realized that, like, yeah, there is a line you don't want to cross. Like, some strikeouts are part of a healthy ecosystem. It's like bacteria in your gut, you know, some bacteria. Not too much bacteria, but definitely not no bacteria.

[E]

Is it like the. Like the stolen base missing a plane sort of corollary?

[D]

Yeah, yeah, it might be like that Stolen base missing a plane.

[C]

Explain that.

[D]

If you never miss a plane, you're getting to the airport too early.

[E]

If you never get caught stealing, you're not stealing enough. And you know, if you never strike out, you're like, you're not making good swing decisions.

[C]

Yeah, that was always what I was looking for. I like to do a column every month or so about where the Giants are first or last in different statistical categories. And you'll sort like in the bad years by chase percentage of hitters. And it's not like a one to one. Like, you can just graph the correlation perfectly, but the good teams are the top and the bad teams are at the bottom. But then if you sort by contact on pitches out of the zone, there's no correlation to anything. It is. You might have the best team in baseball right up there with the Rockies. Like, it's. There's no correlation. There is a way to make contact on pitches out of the zone that I guess can help a team. Like, if you're the Blue Jays and you're spoiling pitches, you're getting Blake Snell out of the game. But in general, if you're hitting a pitch out of the zone, the pitchers won, you know, almost. Almost always.

[D]

Yeah, that's a good one. Too many strikeouts, definitely still worse than. Yeah, but It's a complicated equation, and it depends on what your sort of temperament is as a hitter, what your swing is, like, what your. What your ultimate goals are, et cetera. Have we said all we want to say about that one?

[E]

I think so, yeah. What's yours, Sam?

[D]

This phrase has kind of gone maybe out of fashion a little bit, but up to 2015, 2016, we would use the term the new money ball a lot. We used to call things the new money ball a lot. What's the new money ball? What's the new market inefficiency? And I remember having a conversation around that time with somebody, I think it was Dan Brooks of Brooks Baseball. And we were talking about what the. What. What it meant when someone said Moneyball. What we immediately thought of, and at the time, about 10 years ago, it was clear, like the dominant, overwhelming. What we meant by saying a team was doing Moneyball at that time was that they were tanking big time to get. To get. To build up a big competitive window. So it was the super rebuild. This was the time when the Astros and the Cubs were super rebuilding. The Philadelphia 76ers were seen as the. The most analytic or maybe second most analytic NBA team, and they were super tanking and relevant to this conversation. Paul Dipodesta had just been hired by the Cleveland Browns. They went on to be the first team in NFL history to lose 15 games in a season. Two years in a row. They were engaged in a super tank. And I wrote a piece for ESPN the Magazine about how this had come to be, that losing that sort of like reframing losses as good had become considered a market inefficiency in the long history that got us there. And I think that the reason that I was so fixated on that was that it felt like tanking had become too powerful, Too powerful. You know, it was like automatic. You want to be good in four years, There is nothing anybody can do to stop you as long as you're willing to lose 115 games, because you can shift all your resources into the future, make all your decisions based on a period of time that nobody else is playing for yet. You get like this huge head start on everyone. You get to make all these trades that are like, maximally efficient because other teams are so focused on the present. And, you know, the Astros had. It was kind of a metaphor or like, in a nutshell, kind of example of this that we were able to predict, I guess Sports Illustrated was able to predict several years in advance the day that they were going to win the World Series. And I thought this was like a possibly an existential concern for the league because if you can't stop a team from getting good, that's a problem. And if the way that they get good is by going through this, like, really economically crippling multi year period of, you know, losing 119 games a year, that was not really good. And I thought this was a spiral that was going to really become a big problem. It just turns out that tanking's not that effective. It's like way less effective than we thought it was or that it seemed at the time. DePodesta's Browns didn't get good. The Philadelphia 76ers didn't get good enough. All sorts of baseball teams have tanked and then just like stayed mediocre. Washington Nationals are currently a team that it just doesn't have a plan to get out of their rebuild.

[C]

It turns out one of the more prominent rebuilds led to the worst baseball team in 100 years.

[D]

Chicago. Yeah, the White Sox. And it seemed like it was going well too.

[E]

Yeah. Okay, that's.

[D]

And so Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, I think at the time, he said, like, he thought that it was going to be diminishing returns as more teams tried this and that it would, it would sort of reach an equilibrium. And that might be what happened. I also think what might have happened is that the Astros and Cubs, I didn't want to give them credit for this at the time, I thought, ah, they just played this, like really, they just found this really easy hack. I think that now, in retrospect, I think they just did a really, really good job. And I don't want to give them credit for doing a really good job at being bad at baseball, but I think that it was unrepeatable because it's actually good was kind of hard. In retrospect, they just made it look easy.

[E]

The thing is that, you know, the Cubs did a really good job drafting, you know, high floor college players. Really made them formidable for a short period of time. The thing about the Astros tank is that the stuff that they did off the field was far more impactful for both their team and the game writ large than what they did because of the tanking. Right. Like, if you look at their drafting, like they kind of biffed it, you know, like they drafted Mark Appell, they drafted Brady Akin. You know, obviously the Alex Bregman pick went well. You know, Lance McCullers, like, went well.

[D]

Wasn't the Balaks Bregman pick the Brady Aiken pick.

[E]

Yes, because it would have been.

[D]

It rolled over and they ended up getting right. And then Carlos Correa obviously was there, right?

[E]

But, you know, then they inherited Springer and all that stuff. So, like, that's. Those are, you know, the fruits of the tanking, right? Or like, some of these young players. But the thing that sustained them was their pitching development, you know, and it was the work that, you know, like Mike Fast and Brandon Taubman and Sig Magdale were doing, you know, underneath Jeff Lunow's sort of, you know, leadership, that really changed the sport in a lot of ways, you know, building off some stuff that had started in some other places. But the Astros were, you know, we wrote a big story about this last year, but the Astros were really the first team that took all of these disparate elements of, like, pitch shaping and trackman and all that sort of stuff and built it at scale. And we're basically like, we're doing this at every level with every player. Like, we're do. We are. This is. We're buying into this 100%. And that is the thing that sustained them and made them, you know, sort of a version of a dynasty. You know, it made them a team that was incredibly important, you know, for, you know, the seven, eight years when they had that run of, you know, reaching the ALCS every year. And so, like, the tanking didn't get them, you know, Christian, Javier and, you know, all those guys who, you know, from Bravo Valdez, all the guys they signed in the Dominican, you know, who went through this sort of program and emerged as, like, elite sort of pitchers. And I think that's the thing that, like, the Orioles have not hit on, you know, or like, the Phillies tank under, you know, Matt Clinton. He did a lot of things well, but, like, they didn't do the major infrastructure thing, and that's what separated the Astros. And I think that is the thing that, you know, because there was some other stuff going on with the Astros. I don't know if you guys have heard about this because of how, you know, impactful the science dealing scandal was. I think that it is. It is rendered a lot of their other work considered less historically important. But I think that it's. It's important to understand, like, in the wide scope of the impact of the Astros, the pitching dev. Is. It's not going to be their legacy, but it's the thing that they did that changed the sport more.

[D]

So I would say, yeah, I think that's right. And when I. I think in 2015, when I was having this conversation with Dan Brooks, obviously it's Dan Brooks. He's Pitch fx. Like, that's like. Clearly we knew that Pitch FX was changing the way that teams, you know, like, you know, looked at baseball events on a pitch by pitch basis. So there was some of that coming out. But I think I, at the time, I underestimated, like, the edge of aspect and focused on the shameless losing aspect.

[E]

Right.

[D]

And you're right, like, there were like, the Astros kind of have these three really super powerful historical impacts. One is the, the cheating and the fact that they basically, like, completely changed the sports relationship to cheating. Like, it will never be charming again. Now it's like we crack down. Two is the, the, you know, the spin stuff, you know, the Colin McEwen McEwenization of baseball. And then three is the tanking. And that felt like the most powerful in 2015, and it kind of wilted. It just sort of like, I think it largely has faded away as, as a, you know, one cool trick to win the World Series.

[E]

And I wonder too, like, thinking, just kind of trying to work through it. I mean, it's possible that the good teams have. Because the good teams have figured out some of the tech stuff, that just acquiring the best players in the draft for three or four years isn't enough. You know, you kind of have to be doing stuff to catch up. And then also a lot of the good teams have figured out how to improve their own players. So no, you know, if you're the, if you're the Los Angeles Dodgers, you never have access to Paul Skeens, but you have the financial resources, you know, to sign Blake Snell and sign Tyler Glasnow and sign Yoshinobi Yamamoto. And if you're the Milwaukee brewers, you never have access to Paul Skeens, but you're able to draft and develop someone like Jacob Mizorowski, who, you know, obviously is not Skeens yet, but, like, I don't know, like, when he's right, he looks really good. And they also have the ability to develop people like, you know, Chad Patrick or, you know, these sort of random guys who they can fiddle the knobs with and make them really, really sort of elite or potentially elite guys. And I think that was just something that wasn't there 10 years ago. The development at the big league level was no longer happening. Guys were sort of fixed in what their abilities were. More so fixed, I think. And so I think that's been maybe leveled the playing field of just like, hey, we got Chris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo and or you know, like all these good players from the draft and you know now that's just. It's there's more going on.

[A]

This holiday. Verizon is helping you bundle up incredible gifts and savings. You'll get the latest phone with a new line on my plan and a brand new smartwatch and tablet. No trade in needed even on our lowest price plan. That's two gifts for your family and one for you or two for you and one for someone else. Or three gifts for you and only you. Either way, you save big on three amazing gifts at Verizon, all on the best 5G network. Visit Verizon today. Rankings based on RootMetric Truthscore report dated 1 2025. Your results may vary. Service plan required for watch and tablet.

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[C]

When you're trying to do a copycat type thing with those golden age of tankings with the Cubs and Astros, I think overestimates just how much was done by being the smartest people in the room and just how much was done by having a good plan and being well prepared, because obviously there's a lot of that. Obviously, you can tell the difference between a good organization and a bad organization when it comes to the draft, but at some point, it's out of your hands. I would have drafted Brady Akin. I would have drafted, you know, Chris Bryant. Like, these are guys. And both were the right picks at the time. Only one works out. And if you don't have Chris Bryant, if Chris Bryant is just a guy, a one, one player. We're not talking about the Cubs rebuild as a success necessarily. It was, like, fun for a little bit, and then it wasn't. Even if you go back to the draft picks before the Astros regime, like George Springer, if there isn't a five foot for, you know, second baseman who surpasses expectations, like these little margins and tipping points of development, I think once they happen, it's easy to say that happened because of good process. But in the absence of that, it's not necessarily the absence of good process. It could just be baseball crap that happened to that team. And it's such a fine line that you can't necessarily copy what the Astros or Cubs did without needing that same sort of good fortune.

[E]

I think that's right. And I think that you, you know, it's just not enough to lose for a while and accumulate five or six, you know, good draft picks. It's just not enough. And the Cubs, I mean, I honestly, like, I. The Cubs, that era I find so fascinating. And I think, you know, someone. I would love to be, like, one of the four people who reads a book about it, you know, about that period of time. Because, like, I think that it was. That it was. It seemed so cutting edge, and then it went away kind of like, almost overnight. You know, there was. And it was, like, such a riveting show to watch, you know, while it was going on, really, like the 15 Cubs, the 16 Cubs, you know, even the 17 Cubs. And then it just kind of was like, yeah, all right. Well, that whole thing, you know, it's kind of fading out and was basically done after 2018, whereas the Astros extended their run and I think, you know, obviously, because of all the stuff they were doing, you know, behind the scenes in terms of, you know, the pitching. And then. Yeah, there was the cheating, too. That was a. That was a big part of it. Yeah.

[C]

Explain that.

[E]

Ah, it's just. It takes too long. It involves a trash can and video.

[C]

Monitors and, like, Oscar the Grouch.

[D]

Yeah. And it makes.

[E]

It makes Astros fans really irritated when it gets brought up so they're the.

[D]

Grouch, but it makes everybody else really irritated when it doesn't get brought up.

[E]

That's right. Yeah.

[C]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[E]

I Wonder, like, in 20 years, could you talk about the Astros without driving people to distraction?

[C]

Probably, but there'll be one person in the room who's just like, you know, just bitter. Twice as bitter. They have to like, carry the bitterness of two people.

[D]

Andy, does, like, Deflategate still come up?

[E]

I don't think so.

[D]

Football conversation?

[B]

I don't, I don't.

[E]

I mean, I guess it again, like, we live in a hater based culture, you know, so, like, yeah, I guess it, it comes up. I, it's hard because I think there's just less of a, like, the way that I learned about, you know, sports history was like reading sports books as a kid. You know, basically it's just like. And, and because there's fewer sports books and then more information is consumed through social media, which, you know, and look, I'm not suggesting that, you know, journalism is a, is a perfect science. Like, obviously there's, there's ways to inaccurately describe history, but I think it's in general, it's a more useful disse of information than just, you know, reading the, for you tab on, on X, the everything site. And so I do wonder if there's just like lost a, if you, if we've lost like a, a common thread of like, what sports history will be from this time period.

[D]

What you got, Andy? What's yours?

[E]

Yeah. Ten years ago, I believe the publishing industry wanted to read a book about the Kansas City Royals. And now I am convinced that they do not want that.

[C]

Come on.

[E]

They do.

[D]

There will come, there will come a time, you know, I, I, people, I, I have this conversation with people. I have friends who still go to concerts. Grant still goes to concerts. And I don't get it. Like, I couldn't. Like the last, the last concert I went to, I was like 31. It was the New Pornographers, and I didn't even make it to the New Pornographers because I was so tired from standing up for like 40 minutes for the opening act. And we're like, where are we supposed to sit? We have to sit. So anyway, so I tell people I will start going to concerts again when all my favorite bands are playing wineries. And that's like, that's when I'm like 65. And the new Pornographers will do like a, you know, mass romantic reunion tour. And they'll play a winery and that's when I'll go back to concerts. And the, the Kansas City Royals were interesting for like 40 minutes. And then the young people moved away from them. Young people's energy got. So you're not going to write a book about them for the young people. You got to write about them for the old people. But the old people aren't old yet. Right. The nostalgia won't kick in for 20 more years. So in 20 years, you're going to go back, see what Terence Gore is up to. You're going to write that book and it's going to be a banger.

[E]

Yeah, I do. I remember Sam and I having a conversation about a proposal I was working through. I think we talked about this like in the summer of 2020. So it was sometime during a Covid period. And Sam was like, so. So the conceit is you're writing the Boys of Summer, except for Gerard Dyson is just playing on the White Sox now. And I was like, oh, well, that really takes the steam out of it. He was like, I. I journeyed to see Eric Hosmer playing first base for the Padres. You know, it's just like. Yeah.

[C]

Anyway, one time I, I had a meeting with a gentleman who was starting a publishing company and he's, he's a. Someone who had enough name recognition to impress the hell out of my father in law. And so I was like, there and I was like, this is so cool. This is so cool. And so he said, do you have any ideas about a book? Like a Baseball Bucket? I think you're great about this baseball stuff. You have any ideas for a book? And so I went into this kind of impassioned pitch about the 1970s Giants, about how they're playing on Astroturf. Willie Mays isn't there, the ballpark's gone, they're going to move to Toronto. And now it's between the 60s and you've got the decline of San Francisco and the region around it. And he, he listened. All this goes, man, that's great. No, but seriously, what have you thought about a book that would sell?

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

And like, that was it. That was my one index card that I had and I was all. And so the, that book ended up being baseball superstars 2026. No, I'm just kidding. It. That's still available in Scholastic book fairs everywhere. Squishy balls. I will sign the squishy balls for a fee.

[D]

Andy, did you bring an answer to your own prompt or.

[E]

The problem is that I feel like my answer is like so anti labor that it's just going to irritate people. But like I would say maybe not 10 years ago, but like eight years ago, you know, seven years ago, I was pretty adamant that teams should be really aggressive on mid tier free agents. That, you know, it's like, oh, you need a starter, just sign Madison Baumgartner, you know, or like just sign Dallas Schuykle or you know, the year Craig Kimbrell was a free agent forever. And I think that I have, as I think about how if you're trying to construct a team, you should really probably only be fishing in the top end of that pool every year if you're doing multi year agreements. And that's a very anti labor and sort of like anti competitive thought. But I mean we just, we. I feel like it's every conversation we have where we talk about team building, where we talk about like, you know, how clubs can get better. It's every conversation I have with executives. It's just like that's the, there's just a pool of players that like, so that's the thing that I, that I feel. Because there was a time where maybe we talked about this but like the, the highest form of baseball analysis was like you should spend money to get good players, right? Because there was a period of time where like Manny Machado and Bryce Harper were not getting paid and, or it took a while, whatever for them to, to get signed. And that was sort of the era where it's like you were commending teams for trying. You know, it's like, oh, the, you know, the red sign, Mike mustakis For like four years, 64 million are like, yeah, like that's, you know, like they're getting after it. And I think, you know, I think we can all recognize like those deals just tend to not work for those types of players.

[D]

The tricky thing about some of those deals is that they are, especially if you're already, if you're a competitive team, if you're a winning team, those trades look like ballast against possible disaster. You sign a two win player for $19 million because you don't want to put that position in the hands of somebody who's unproven or who you maybe think has, you know, higher, higher collapse rate, higher, higher error bars, like a rookie. Basically. The problem is that those guys are just, it turns out, also really prone to collapse. You know, like the Dodgers. The problems with the Dodgers this year were the guys they signed for, you know, 10 to 20 million dollars a year it was like Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates, Michael Conforto, Te Oscar Hernandez. It wasn't Glass now, you know, it wasn't Snell. It wasn't, you know, like they've, they've have success with the, you know, Chris Taylors of the world and the max Muncies of the world. I'm talking early Chris Taylor and early Max Muncie and they have success with the Clayton Kershaw's and the Mookie Bets's in the world. And it's the Confortos that you end up screaming at. So I guess the, that is maybe the case that they're not providing you upside. They don't, they don't feel like they're providing you upside. And the downside is kind of just as embedded in them as in anybody else. Like baseball just can, can chop the legs out of anybody. Even someone who's had like six average years in a row can suddenly just be a disaster. I don't know if I agree with you though. I don't. I mean there's a. There's obviously a line like where they start being great deals. They start being, you know, like better than the alternative. So I haven't thought about it systemically.

[C]

I will just wrap this up by saying Mike Mustakis. There used to be a style of writing back when Sam and I, and I guess you, Andy, but you were more professional. Where we would make up fake conversations, right? Where we would do this kind of wannabe screenplay type thing, comedic effect. And it's very dated, very of its time. And one time, three years after the heyday, three or four years after the heyday, I tried to do it again for something about Mike Mustakis and Sam. I cannot remember the exact quote, but he put me in my place so quickly and so effectively of like, wow, I guess it's 2012 again. And I knew exactly what he meant and I never did it again. So Sam cured me and I just wanted to thank him for that. Mike Mustakis, remember me? Do you remember that at all, Sam?

[D]

I remember the, the scene. I don't remember the details, but it is crazy how I don't know why fake dialog worked so well and then suddenly it didn't. I don't know what, like there was really something in the collapse of that trend that feels like relevant to like hypercolor's T shirts too. Like, how can something just work so, so well and then stop?

[E]

When did the Rays hire Jeff Sullivan?

[D]

1918.

[E]

Oh, geez. Okay, maybe.

[C]

Well, he wasn't doing that at fangraph, he wasn't doing.

[D]

No, he went. He. He went. He quit being funny for like four years.

[C]

Well, forever. Like, I've talked to him since then, I would say.

[E]

I mean, we've talked about it. I will continue. I hope that fangraphs gets a spike in traffic on the U. Darvish Mark Trumbo at bat from 2013 that Jeff Sullivan wrote about. I hope, like, every two months they get a random 5,000 clicks on it. Because that remains the funniest thing I've ever read about baseball, which is just the fake dialogue.

[D]

Dialogue.

[E]

Fake dialogue.

[D]

Fake internal dialogue.

[E]

The internal monologue of Mark Trumbo getting sliders from you, Darvish. And it just goes, fastball, fastball, fastball. This is going to be a fastball.

[D]

John Boyce, you know, the Roger angel of Internet content. Sports content, got his start doing fake dialogue.

[C]

That's right. He's probably. Yeah, he's that the Earth.

[B]

Who.

[E]

Who was it who did the. The game story from a 2010 Giants Phillies. That is just the.

[C]

Sullivan.

[E]

Was that Jeff? Okay.

[C]

Yeah, it's. It pissed me off at the time, cuz where it's like, that's my beat.

[E]

Buster pose being like, oh, gosh, I do believe I have a hit.

[C]

Right. I still think about Royal SW saying, now if y' all just cooperate. Like.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Anyways. All right, this has been. Wait, real quick. Is. Is. Is Harry still in your lap?

[E]

No, he took off. Would you have something to say? I can tell him if you want, if you need.

[C]

Yeah. If you get. I was gonna have you hold up an earbud to give him a message. It goes like this.

[E]

Oh, yeah. That would have confused him.

[C]

All right, this has been episode 193. We'll be back after Thanksgiving. Wow. All right, well, happy Thanksgiving, guys.

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

All right.

[D]

Is that true? Holy cow.

[C]

193. We'll be back after Thanksgiving. Tell you what we're thinking before. See you then.

[E]

I was very wrong.

[A]

This holiday, Verizon is helping you bundle up incredible gifts and savings. You'll get the latest phone with a new line on my plan and a brand new smartwatch and tablet. No trade in needed even on our lowest price price plan. That's two gifts for your family and one for you. Or two for you and one for someone else or three gifts for you and only you. Either way, you save big on three amazing gifts at Verizon, all on the best 5G network. Visit Verizon today. Rankings based on rootmetric truth score report dated 1 2025. Your results may vary. Service plan required for watch and tablet Additional terms apply. If you love to travel, Capital One has a rewards credit card that's perfect for you. With the Capital One Venture X card, you earn unlimited double miles on everything you buy. Plus you get premium benefits at a collection of luxury hotels when you book on Capital One Travel. And with Venture X, you get access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. Open up a world of travel possibilities with a Capital One Venture X card. What's in your wallet?

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Terms apply. Lounge access is subject to change. See capitalone.com for details. Get Thanksgiving ready at Whole Foods Market with so many ways to save their 365 brand has great prices and the high quality you expect. No antibiotics ever. Turkeys start at 1.49 a pound with prime. Round out your spread with mashed potatoes and condensed soups, plus fresh organic produce like green beans, white mushrooms and carrots for casseroles and sides. Shop Low prices and quality at Whole Foods Market in store or online. Terms apply.