Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1079: The Most and Least Satisfying First Halves

Episode Date: July 3, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jeff’s latest hiking expedition, then try to determine which teams had the most and least satisfying first halves. Lastly, they talk to Brian Lacusky, who reminisces about about his role in the construction of Coors Field. Audio intro: TUNS, "To Your Satisfaction" Audio interstitial: Frank Sinatra, "There Used to Be […]

It's not easy for us to see Maybe it's not supposed to be To your satisfaction Your satisfaction Your satisfaction To your satisfaction To your satisfaction Hello and welcome to episode 1079 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs.

Hello. Hello. We are coming to you the day before the 4th of July. We are not actually speaking on the day before the 4th of July because you are, as usual, making the most of your time off and leaving the inside of your apartment. Where are you going? Where in the world is Jeff Sullivan as people are actually listening to this? Well, maybe not so exciting because over Memorial Day weekend, I disappeared to go try to climb at Shasta. because over memorial day weekend i disappeared to go try to climb at shasta and because a team member was unable to force herself to continue the ascent we had to turn around short of the summit so long story short going back returning to try to get this thing done so it's going to be a lot of driving and a lot of climbing and during this podcast we speak to someone who was

involved in the construction of coors field and he talks about how he had some difficulty when he would ascend to roughly the mile marker up in the higher levels of Coors Field and we are going to be pushing nearly three miles up not quite three miles up but 14,000 feet and change so I will not be breathing well you've done it before you have Shasta experience now so you're a seasoned veteran. Is it less entertaining to climb a mountain the second time and see the same view? I guess it's not the same depending on the weather and the visibility, but if you are trudging the same path, is that any worse than it was the first time? It's different. There's a little bit of a reduced thrill, of course, but when we went uh the first time we were one

of the first parties to try to climb this particular route this year and the road to the trailhead was slightly covered by snow so we actually had to park more than three miles away from the trailhead which just added three miles of trudging both ways to our climb this time we don't have to do that we can go most of the way to the trailhead which is nice it is less thrilling i think to revisit a mountain just because you know many of the views although we don't know the summit view i guess google can tell me but it is also far less intimidating to go back to a mountain because you feel like you know many of its features and so i'm a little less excited to see the views but i am definitely a lot less

afraid of what the mountain might do to me cool Cool. Well, hope you make it this time. Me too. I do not want to go back again. So as Jeff just alluded to, we will be talking to Brian Lukosky, who was involved in the construction of Coors Field. We have a connection to him because his daughter is a listener and Patreon supporter. We'll explain all that when we get to it, but that will come after our topic or topics for today. And we're a little limited in the responsiveness we can have in this episode since we are pre-recording. So we're going to do something that is not particularly time sensitive. Did you want to bring up anything else before we get to that or no? No, it's weird to talk in the future yes it is so we are now or as you're listening to this have just either reached or passed the midway point of the season seems like it came fairly quickly but i think the actual half comes more quickly than we expect because we're conditioned

to think of the half as coming in mid-july which which is not at all accurate. So on a recent episode of the Ringer MLB show, Michael Bauman and I drafted our favorite things from the first half, and they were just favorite stories or players, Aaron Judge, baseball being juiced, etc. And we wanted to do something somewhat similar but different on this episode. We just want to talk about the most and least successful team first halves, and we want to make this slightly more complicated than just who has the best and worst record. That would be very obvious. You wouldn't need a podcast for that. So I think we're approaching it in a sort of nebulous way, but obviously a fan satisfaction with his or her team is relative to expectations to a certain extent. It's relative to the performance of one's division

rivals and competitors for playoff spots. It hinges somewhat on how you arrive at your record. Was it an aesthetically pleasing first half? Did someone get hurt? Is it sustainable or unsustainable? So we didn't make a formula or spreadsheet or anything, which is out of character for us, I guess, but we're just kind of going to go by gut and feel here. And I guess, what are the contenders for best first half or most successful or most satisfying first half? And if you just go by record, obviously, it's the Astros. Maybe the Astros are the actual answer anyway, but what are the other teams that you would fold into the discussion? Yeah, okay.

If I had to think about this, I would think right now it's the Astros just because they've completely trounced everybody with zero question. Yes, and not only have they trounced everybody, but no one's really putting up a fight anyway in that division as we speak. The best team is a game over 500, and there are three teams that are hanging around, I suppose, at least in the wildcard race. But there was some suspicion. I think everyone kind of thought, or at least there was a consensus, that the Astros were the best team in that division. And you and I certainly thought the Astros were the best team in that division. And you and I certainly thought the Astros were the best team in that division.

But you could find Rangers supporters out there. You could find Mariners boosters out there. And if two teams are not separated by that much in true talent, it's very easy for one of them to have bad luck and the other to have good luck. That's kind of what happened to the Astros last season, perhaps. And so they have avoided that. And it's gone as smoothly as it possibly could, and no one has really put up any roadblocks in their way.

So successful and happy, certainly. You know, one of the ways that the English language is stupid is that, like, Ruganet Odor is a ranger, but you work for the ringer. Like, that's just, there's no reason for that to be the case. So, okay, the Astros are up there. They're a contender for this, just because they have trounced, and they've met slightly exceeded expectations, etc. Yankees clearly that to be the case. The Astros are up there. They're a contender for this just because they have trounced and they've met

slightly exceeded expectations, etc. Yankees clearly have to be up there. I don't think that there's another team in the American League that would fit in either one of those classes in terms of exceeding expectations. Then I would say the Rockies, however, as we are talking, I don't know what's going to take place over the weekend, but they've currently

lost more games in a row than I thought they had. It's eight. Eight is the answer. When this podcast is published, that streak could be even longer. Could be over what's going to take place over the weekend, but they've currently lost more games in a row than I thought they had. It's eight. Eight is the answer. When this podcast is published, that streak could be even longer. Could be over. Probably going to be over. But they belong because you don't want to be too biased by recency. And they're still on pace to win 94 games as we speak. But still, that's a big losing streak.

And they're losing ground. They are in the wildcard hunt. They're firmly in the wildcard hunt, I suppose. So they're in there. But the Diamondbacks can feel better yeah well you could make an even stronger case maybe for the diamondbacks and yeah absolutely i think the the pre-season expectations were worse they are as we speak considerably better record wise and the way that they have done it is maybe a little more confidence inspiring than the way that the Rockies have done it in a few ways.

So I don't know that they have captured the popular imagination in the way that the Rockies have. It seems like the Rockies have—I don't know, maybe this is wrong, but you got a chat question about this, actually, that I think we briefly talked about on the podcast. Someone asked you why the Diamondbacks weren't getting more attention, and it's really hard to gauge attention. But it seems like at least in analytical circles, maybe there are more articles about the Rockies just because it's always fun to write about the Rockies and Coors Field and have they figured it out and what are they doing differently, whereas you don't get that so much with the Diamondbacks, although they have their own crazy offensive ballpark. So maybe there's been a little less focus in certain circles,

but I don't know if that's true on a national level. And the Dibenbacks have done it in some fun ways too with the base running and the really formidable rotation that replaced Shelby Miller with Zach Godley, who's been even better. So they've been a fun team too. Yeah, I think the Rockies have the one drawn you hit on it it's coors field and so for any spheres that traffic in baseball numbers or are interested in baseball

numbers the rockies always have something compelling that you can look at no matter how the rockies are doing because you can always analyze the park now like you also pointed out the diamondbacks play in a very offense friendly park according to fangraphs it's tied for the second most hitter friendly park in baseball but it's a great distance below Coors Field. There is no contending with Coors Field for a very good reason. So the Diamondbacks don't have that sort of draw. I don't think that the markets are meaningfully different. I don't think the online consumption is meaningfully different between Rockies fans and Diamondback

fans, but Diamondbacks just continue to kind of hang around just slightly off the radar, even though they are probably a better team than the Rockies right now. And shifting over, I think the obvious fifth team to bring up here would be the currently, but maybe not still first place Milwaukee Brewers. I don't know where they are as this comes out. But one of the things I was thinking about earlier this morning was if this were happening, let's say it's 2017, except we still have the same information we had 20 years ago. I don't know if we're just casual fans or we don't have access to projections or we don't know anything about the advanced sets would this feel different i think you and i are both disinclined and we've both written about how we we figure the brewers are just gonna drop off any moment and the cubs will pass them because

they're the cubs and they're the brewers and and there's no reason for the division to look like this so i can't tell but i think it's caused me to just, I don't know, I'm not a Brewers fan, but whatever our version of enjoy is, I think I've done it less. I just, I'm less wowed, I guess, the Brewers are in first place because in my head, I just keep thinking,

well, but they're not going to finish in first place, so who cares? But I mean, it's happened through the season and they're ahead of the Cubs. Right, that's the thing. Well, we talked about this once on an email show, right? Like whether playoff odds enhance your enjoyment of a season or not, or whether it's even worth bringing up, whether fans would be better off if they know about the projections and thebable all this is. And yes, there's every time I think about them, a part of my mind that thinks this won't last.

And by the end of the year, the story won't be quite as exciting. But every day that goes by, I enjoy it slightly more in a different way, just because it's weirder by the day and more surprising that they've managed to keep this going. So I think on the whole, as long as it lasts, like as long as they keep playing at a 500 or better level, and as long as the Cubs don't surpass that and it remains a race, I think it's a lot of fun, even though I don't really expect it to continue. So yeah, I would definitely have the Brewers up there. And then maybe there's one

other team in this conversation the Twins could be possibly in this conversation I don't know they're coming off the they had the worst record in baseball last year right and they have been in first place a lot of the season they have kept very close to Cleveland as we speak they're barely behind them and I don't think anyone expected that race to be much closer than the Cubs Brewers race. Maybe people expected the Twins to be better than the Brewers, but people expected Cleveland to be a lot better than they've been. So they have a case.

I would include them in the conversation, which I guess we just now have, and we can probably remove them from the conversation. Yeah, there are clear parallels between the Twins and the Indians and the Cubs and the Brewers. And I feel far different about the Twins than I do about the Brewers. And maybe it's just because the Brewers are technically sitting in first and the Twins are not. But I look at the Twins and the Twins are, you know, by most measures, what's the word? Bad? Not a good baseball team. You could at least say the Brewers have, as of right now, a better run differential than the Cubs by one.

And they have a better record by one game. The Twins are a game and a half behind the Indians. They're also 104 runs worse than the Indians in run differential. They've scored 23 fewer runs. They've allowed 81 more. And it's because the Twins pitchers aren't good. And Jason Castro can't pitch. And I think of the Twins as sort of this, in my head, I picture Jose Barrios, Miguel Sano, and Byron Buxton.

Barrios looks pretty good, and Miguel Sano looks great, and Byron Buxton looks like garbage. He's the one who's supposed to be most exciting. It's good for them to have a pitcher, and it's great for them, of course, to be above 500. Their whole offense just looks kind of decent, and they all have better discipline. The Twins can can score and there's no real question about that but with buxton being so bad and the pitching staff being so bad i i find it really hard to see a lot of upside in this team and i guess it would be interesting to talk to some twins fans to see how much how much they're enjoying it but in my limited interactions it seems

like the many of them are fairly defeatist and they acknowledge the team is not in very great shape. So I don't know. I don't know what the season has felt like. Yeah, I think I would probably remove them from the discussion, but I wanted to mention them. So I guess you could mention the Dodgers, but probably not, right? Because everyone expected them to be great. They haven't been quite as great as the Astros, although it's close and they've had a close race to contend with and two contenders to contend with that people didn't necessarily see coming. So yeah, I guess they don't give me the feeling that I would be thrilled if I were a Dodgers fan. I'd be satisfied, and I would feel as if the season we're preceding is planned largely. Pretty much. I mean, I know they've lost Urias, so that sucks.

But I don't know. This is kind of what we've expected the Dodgers to be for a few years. There's always been that sense that the Dodgers were sort of underachieving, even though they finished first place like four years in a row, which is great. But now they actually just kind of look like a big stomping juggernaut. And that's with two other pretty good teams in the division all of a sudden. So yeah, I don't know. I think the Dodgers are what they were supposed to be now that they're in first place

it's one of those things where i think we're biased by our preseason expectations but we look at the standings now and think oh right sorted itself out now the dodgers are in first forever just like we're going to feel if and when the cubs get into first place we will think okay that's it race is over even though that's not how it works but i know that's how my brain is going to assume that it works yeah all right so we have narrowed it to five teams yankees astros brewers rockies and diamondbacks can we toss out any of those does any one of them seem the most expendable well let's see we're we're trying to figure out who who i guess feels who can feel the best. Yeah, who's entitled to feel like the first half was the greatest success relative to expectations. Or yeah, I guess that's the best baseline.

And maybe you could just go with change in playoff odds or something like that. But I think there are probably some less quantifiable elements that enter into this also. So like the Brewers, for instance, I think part of the fun of the Brewers being so successful is that, well, not only that they were supposed to be bad, but that there's the way that they've done it and they've acquired talent from all these different teams and leagues and levels and all these different transaction types.

And they seem to have maybe fielded a competitive team in a year when they were supposed to be at their low point. And so now you can look forward to the prospect of the Brewers being good for years and maybe never having to go through what the Astros and the Cubs had to go through to get good. And, of course, they have the prospects who are highly rated, too. That's not reflected in their record but it is reflected in their fans level of happiness so i think all of that enters into it i think my answer would be the diamondbacks and here's why i think that as good as the yankees have been i don't think that their plans have changed i don't think the brewers plans have changed the astros plans certainly

haven't changed and i don't think the rockies plans have changed but arizona came into this season in a fragile spot they had a uh a new front office that kind of came in and i think the Rockies plans have changed but Arizona came into this season in a fragile spot they had a a new front office that kind of came in and I think the vibe that a lot of people had during the offseason was that okay the front office is going to let the team play it out first half and then maybe come midseason then they start the sell-off they do the overhaul maybe this is where Paul Goldschmidt becomes available and there was the thought that okay the Diamondbacks have been so bad recently that here comes the teardown the front office just wants to figure out what it has and instead they have 50 wins they have 30 losses they have one of the best records in baseball they have been so good and so seemingly justifiably good at least their their performance supports their performance i guess is one way to put it

that this is a team that was right on the border between we might have to rebuild and we could be good and now they have figured out oh we could be good and now they have figured out oh we're actually good and i think that is phenomenal for the organization it's obviously phenomenal for the fans because as much as fans in houston have embraced the teardown or chicago have embraced the teardown it sucks it's a miserable number of years you can talk about how much you want to watch prospects develop and know that your organization is going in the right direction but it's always better to just be good now especially when you're good now with a decently young core it's not like the diamondbacks are very old and it's exciting to see them doing what they're doing so i think

they have gained the most since the start of the season which is uh which is great and it would take i don't know what's the negative version of a miracle for them to miss the playoffs at this point they'd really have to mess up yeah they, they would. Yeah, that's a really good answer. I don't think I would have said Diamondbacks instinctively at the beginning of this conversation, but I think maybe you've changed my mind just because, right, relative to expectations, they've overperformed. They've done so in the most convincing fashion of the overperformers. They look like a very formidable regular season team, maybe a more formidable postseason team, if you believe that there is such a thing. And I would have to say

that, yeah, especially coming on the heels of the last frustrating years, and they were supposed to contend last year and didn't, or at least they were according to the previous regime, if not the previous projections. So I think if you take that into account, that probably plays a part in this also, although certainly the Rockies have caused as much frustration and hopelessness as just about any franchise for its fans over the last many years. So yeah, I have a hard time arguing that. I might have said Rockies, if not for this recent losing streak, which confirmed fears that there would be such a losing streak at some point. So that probably does bump them down below Arizona for me. And the Yankees have come back to earth somewhat and have been overtaken by the Red Sox, who were the favorites coming into the year. So yeah, I think taking all of that into account, I can't argue with your conclusion. So there it is,

Arizona Diamondbacks, effectively Wild's most satisfying team of the first half. All right. So it's the Mets, right? Now we get negative. Yeah, this seems like an easier conversation. It's the Mets or the Giants, right? I don't know if there's any other team that's really in this discussion. If we want to entertain the idea of there being a periphery, you could say, okay, maybe Blue Jays kind of. Yeah, I would put the Phillies in there. Just not only have they been the worst, but they just maybe have stalled a little or have given rise to fears that their rebuild is not proceeding as planned and so maybe not only are they bad now but they

won't come out of this on the other side being as good as everyone thought they would so yeah i'd mention them blue jays right as you said got off to that terrible start i've had injury issues were a fairly popular playoff pick and And I guess with them, you also have the looming specter of the age of the team and guys who are going to hit free agency and the fact that this might be the last run or one of the last runs for this group of guys. So all that enters into it. So Blue Jays, Phillies, and Giants and Mets. I don't think there's really any other team that has an argument here. No. I mean, in a sense, the Cubs are a great disappointment,

but we're not going to be able to... I can't identify them as the most disappointing. I'm sure many of the fans might not even realize there's a new regular season taking place that they're participating in. I don't think the Cubs have noticed. Jesse Rogers had an article go up at ESPN on, I believe it was Friday, that talked about how the Cubs haven't yet found their identity for 2017.

And this sort of gets into what we were talking about last week, where Miguel Montero's comments and then being designated for assignment is a reflection of how fragile clubhouse chemistry is. And every clubhouse is different, even when it feels like it's very much the same. So the Cubs are trying to figure out a new dynamic and they are a disappointing club for sure but they're still probably going to make the playoffs still probably going to win the division still probably

a very good contender to make the world series and that's a lot more than you can say for the new york mets or the san francisco giants who seem like the clear clear selections here no matter what the phillies rebuild is doing and i personally would identify the mets as being more disappointing, even though they have a significantly better record than the Giants, because I think it's the Mets who seem to me to be facing the bigger, longer term question marks. That's an interesting question. Yeah, I would say Mets because, well, if there's any such thing as a grace period or a time when you can't be too upset because of your team's recent success. Certainly the Cubs would fall under that after the way that last year went. And really the Giants kind of have to fall under that too. I don't know if that has made their

second half struggles last year or their first half struggles this year any more palatable, but the fact that they won three world series and you know we're just so good and exceeded expectations so many times has to you know play a part here so probably i would just rule them out because of that like if there's any lingering goodwill just from those good years that extends into this year, like I would imagine that there has to be some portion of the fan base that feels like, well, we've had it pretty good. So we can't complain too much, whereas I'm pretty certain that there's not a large portion of the Mets fan base

that is thinking that. Now, I guess you could say that the Giants have been worse than the Mets, which is certainly true. They are farther out of the race. They have been abysmal. And I guess also you can say that the Mets have done it in a more disconcerting way looking forward, which is the argument that you were just preparing to make. Yeah, I think with the Giants, they've got the worst record. You do get the grace period. Now,

the season that they've had means they're probably going to lose johnny cueto they could trade him you have to wonder why brennan crawford can't hit anymore and why hundred pence can't hit anymore i'm sure there are reasons that i just haven't dug into but if you are a mets fan and i know mets fans already feel this far more acutely than i ever could or will but this is a situation where i think the histrionics are kind of justified and this is one of the things that speaks to the real power of playoff success, because the Mets have made the playoffs, they've gotten pretty deep in the playoffs, they went to a World Series and were not non competitive in it, I guess. But there's just this sense of a real missed opportunity because of the talent that I don't need to bring up. But it's all there. But you look at the season that they have had, and as much as last year felt

a little bit disappointing, because not all the players could stay healthy and etc. Just on the pitching staff alone. I know everybody knows this, but I just have to go down this again. Noah Syndergaard, obviously missing. He's missing for a while. Zach Wheeler on the disabled list. Matt Harvey on the disabled list with a new problem that seems pretty significant. Robert Gasselman on the disabled list and also just bad for some reason.

Steven Matz is back, but he's not missing any bats. He's not throwing a slider. He just looks like a different pitcher. I don't know how much you can count on him. So they have Jacob de Grom, who's great. They still have him. And that's it. That's what they have. That's what their pitching staff has been reduced to. And as much as we've talked about over the years, how if you could have your ideal rebuild, you'd build around bats like the Cubs instead of pitchers like the Mets. I think we've seen just enough of a glimpse of what the Mets could be that it makes this really, really dejecting and disappointing. I'm not in any way invested in the Mets' success, but I can imagine if I were a Mets fan, then this would be a nightmare scenario.

Yeah, you could maybe make the case that Mets fans are conditioned to feel fatalistic, and they've all been expecting this to happen and are not surprised anytime something terrible befalls a Mets player. Whereas maybe Giants fans have been conditioned to think that you win the World Series every couple of years. So maybe they're more disappointed. that, you know, all this stuff about the injuries, the off the field issues with Harvey and the management of the team's training staff and medical staff and injuries and 10 day DL stuff and all of those distractions and strangeness that has dominated the conversation about the Mets. And yeah, it really just kind of calls into question whether this team can win, not just this year, but in the future,

because one thing we know about pitcher injuries and player injuries in general is that one of the best predictors of whether you're going to get hurt is whether you got hurt in the past. And so in a sense, not only has this year kind of fallen by the wayside because of all these injuries, but you have to discount all of the future performance too. Even if these guys, in theory, should recover and come back healthy, you can't count on that. So this whole team is founded on the young pitching staff, and if the entire young pitching staff is hurt, then you can't really count on the team winning this way. So yeah, I would say that the Mets have to be the hands-down winner here,

which isn't to say that the Giants season hasn't also been set, which is, you know, then the Mets still have some kind of chance at the playoffs. Fangraphs, I think, still has their playoff odds in double digits. I don't know exactly why or how that is. But, you know, there is still some opportunity, far more of an opportunity for the Mets than there exists for the Giants. So this season could still be salvaged. And I know that June has historically, at least in the last few years, been like the month that Mets fans feel at their lowest. And then things have turned around. And then, you know, down the stretch, they get to play a bunch of their division opponents, only one of whom is any good. So there's that Mets season is not completely lost, but it has been a lost first half. It's been a very disappointing first half.

And throw in the fact that, you know, no David Wright and the team defense is bad. And now Michael Conforto is slumping and hurt it's just everything everything has just been really brutal for mets fans except for i guess more recent jacob degrom is that it and ahmed rosario is coming so they can cling to that things are looking up yeah all right so i'm comfortable declaring them the winner slash loser. Effectively, Wild's official first half disappointing, dissatisfying team, the New York Mets. So we hope for better things for them going forward and I guess not worse things for the Diamondbacks. They can keep having a nice season. having a nice season. So yeah, all right. I think we have passed judgment fairly and accurately, and no one listening could possibly disagree with anything we have said so far. I cannot believe that the Mets are second to last in the National League in the ERA. That is just...

I know. In that park with that pitching staff. Yeah, it's crazy. Okay, put you on the spot here. According to RightNow, the Fangraph's rest of season projected standings, the Mets have a rest of season projected winning percentage of 524. Diamondbacks, 499. Do you think from this point forward that the Mets will win games at a better clip than the Diamondbacks?

I do not think that. And normally I am one to put my faith in the projections and usually the projections will beat me in a game of projecting things. But I'd say that if there is an aspect of the projections that is maybe less reliable or has bigger error bars, or we just don't know as much about how to project it, it would be injuries. And that is the thing that is largely responsible for the Mets struggles and I would

imagine would continue to play a big part of their second half so I haven't looked to see what the projected playing time or performance of the individual players according to the fan graph stats charts is but yeah I'm gonna go with Arizona over New York yeah I will too and even though that's a little cheating is it's easy answer it's the answer everybody wants and i also think that one thing you have to consider that the diamondbacks will probably add to their bullpen around the trade deadline mets will probably sell off some pieces and then they will also probably if they are not in the race shut down some pitchers they will lose more down the stretch but still it's an interesting thought experiment i guess that there is a it's non-falsifiable right we? We can't prove what's

actually right or wrong based on an N of one. So there we go. We're right by default. All right. So let's take a quick little break and then let's learn about Coors Field. We'll be right back with Brian Lukosky. And there used to be rock candy and a great big 4th of July with the fireworks exploding all across the summer sky. And the people watched in wonder how they laugh and how they cheer. And there used to be a ballpark right here. So last week when Jeff and I were talking about Coors Field and cycles and the fact that there have now been as many cycles in Coors Field as there have been in any other ballpark, even the more than a century old ones, we got a tweet after that conversation from a Patreon supporter and listener, Kylie Lukoski, who said, my dad was a project manager for the construction of Coors Field and he had to sit down because he

was laughing so hard at the cycle stat. So I had to follow up with this. Now that the Rockies are winning and there's speculation that maybe perhaps finally they have solved Coors Field or figured out how to solve Coors Field, We are, of course, as interested as ever in the ballpark that is unlike every other ballpark, and we were eager to talk to someone who was involved in building that ballpark. So we are now joined by Kylie's dad, Brian Lukuski. Hi, Brian. Hello. So you were a project manager in the construction of Coors Field. What did that entail? Well, I was one of several contracts managers or project managers, a little bit different approach than most construction projects as far as the management process goes.

Normally, you have a project manager responsible for the entire management of a construction project, but this project was so big that they assigned several contracts managers, probably I think there were like eight or 10 of us. And I was responsible for all of the millwork, all the cabinetry, all the woodwork, all the trim, the bars, the baseboards, a lot of the architectural wood features throughout the building, including the locker rooms, restaurants, managed the tile subcontract, the terrazzo subcontract, the carpeting subcontract, the roofing, and the sheet metal subcontract. And when I say managed, I was responsible for managing from soup to nuts as far as usually a project manager only gets involved with managing the contracts and the payments and

the change requirements. But in this instance, they had us actually involved in the field, processing our own requests for information, reviewing all the submittals, processing all the payment applications. So I had about $22 million in subcontracted work that I was managing on the project, coordinating installation in the field with our superintendents. And I assume you had had no previous ballpark building experience, but maybe there was a lot. Absolutely none.

Zero. Yeah. Now, the company I worked for had a lot of experience, and we had a lot of people that did have. Several of the people came from the Baltimore project that was just finishing or just finished prior. So we had a lot of experience. It wasn't your jurisdiction

necessarily, but back then, do you recall there being a sense that you were putting together what was basically going to be the most extreme ballpark that existed in the major leagues, or did it just feel like any other ballpark? Well, I wasn't involved with the design as much, but there were a lot of new features that were just coming about from the architect was HOK, Helmut Labada, and Casabon. And they were kind of bringing ballparks into this full 360 degree concourse plan where you could walk the entire concourse, the entire perimeter of the concourse. So that was a new feature.

And then the big talk, of course, was the elevation and what the baseball was going to do. And they kind of already had an idea from what was going on, you know, a couple of miles away at the football stadium nearby. Yeah. And do you recall any discussion of what to do about that? As you said, you know, you weren't drawing up the blueprint exactly. the blueprint exactly but you know that was obviously years before anyone thought of doing something to the ball and storing it in a humidor and trying to dampen offense that way but i guess you know just having the fences be deep and the outfield be big is about all you could do there was a lot of discussion about it uh but i wasn't intimately involved with those conversations and i came to

the project, it was well under construction. I got there about the last seven or eight months of the project, and it was well over a two-year project. And what were some of the challenges that you faced in finishing it? Well, the winters there were pretty harsh, especially coming from Florida all my life. And I was working in Tennessee before I went out to Denver, but the winters were frequently in the teens and the mornings when you went to work. But, you know, it warmed up pretty nice in the afternoons. Generally, you know, it was in the 40s and 50s in the winter. So that was probably the biggest challenge the last six or eight months. You know, the weather, you know, we always had to plan concrete placing around the weather, or if there were small areas, you could set up temporary enclosures.

There were a lot of propane heaters all over the project, and a lot of adhesives don't really work in temperatures that are much lower than 50 degrees Fahrenheit. So there's a lot of things you have to plan around and work around. But the weather was kind of a challenge. The timeline was a major challenge. When I got there early September of 2014, and they said we were going to play baseball the end of March, based on my five years of experience out of college building jails, I was thinking that we had not much more than a pipe dream of getting

there, but we actually got there. It was a lot of work. And that's one of the things I learned, that with enough resources and enough planning and willpower, you can pretty much accomplish anything. So the time was a huge factor. When I got there, they were still placing concrete on the concourse. There were no seats at all in the stadium. So there's a huge amount of work, but they had over 800 workers on site every day. It's a massive amount of manpower and a lot of logistics to track. So I can't speak to what you do on a regular basis, obviously a stadium contract. Those are few and far between. So I don't know what kind of budget you were ordinarily handling, but in retrospect, how much more additionally complicated, I guess, was it to work on such an expensive

design as a ballpark relative to, I would assume, although I guess I don't know, I would assume that you were generally not working on projects that are quite that enormous? No, it was probably one of the largest contracts the company had back in the day. It was a large contract. Now, it was probably one of the largest contracts the company had back in the day. It was a large contract. Now, it was a joint venture with another contractor. M.A. Mortenson out of Minneapolis was the joint venture contractor. And they also had ballpark experience. So it really just takes a ton of resources.

I was used to being on job sites with a couple of job site trailers put together. And when I got here, it was, I mean, it was like trailer city. And the construction parking lot was, you know, a mile long, you know, between, it's sandwiched between a rail line and the perimeter streets on the ballpark. But it's just a tough logistics to get that many people in the right place at the right time and to get all the parts and pieces coordinated. So yeah, it's a large project. And are most of the materials that you put in place still there, or has it been overhauled and renovated and replaced to a large extent since then?

I know Mortensen did a renovation not too long ago. I think it was only just a few years ago. To what extent, I'm not really sure. But a lot of the logistics and complications of the original construction, we were with the cabinets, the bars, and the millwork. And for example, the Rockies offices, the executive offices are behind home plate, behind the club and suite level, and pretty large offices. And we were receiving the plans six months before the ballpark was supposed to open

and we had to build out and finish that entire space within a six-month period so there was a lot of things we were doing sequence wise that we wouldn't normally do we were fabricating cabinets and millwork prior to having any walls but normally you build walls you measure between the walls and then you you know fabricate In this case, we were so pressed for time, we were fabricating materials before there were finished walls and providing templates to the field so that they could build to those structures. Those are kind of some of the things that we were doing to make sure we met the date. What kind of hours were you working during that crunch? It was at least a six-day-a-week job for everybody, and the last several months, it was a seven-day-a-week job,

and we were working pretty much getting there in the mornings before seven o'clock, having a meeting about 6.30, and then working till 6.30 or seven o'clock every night. My God. A lot of hours. That's a few too many hours. I think you should have had a little more advanced notice of where the ballpark was going to go. So because you were involved to whatever extent in the manufacture of the stadium, do you still kind of track,

do you feel sort of enough of a personal link to the ballpark that you sort of track what's going on with how it's developed and how it's evolving over time? Or at this point, is it just kind of something that you did in the past and and you treat it like any other project no i i every time they're on i try to catch the ball game and look and see what's happened to the park and you know always been a marlins fan for being from south florida but you know i always pull for the rockies unless Wow. We should interview you about that instead. That's even more interesting.

I've never talked to a Marlins fan. There's a lot of us down here. What's it like? Sometimes it's great, you know, when they make it to the World Series. I mean, not a lot of teams can say in the short span of their history that they've got two world titles. True. It's up and down.

Yeah, right. So did you get to take any pieces of Coors Field with you when you were finished with it? We did. Everybody that worked on the team was given a stadium seat. So I have a green stadium seat in my office generally. Every time I move offices, I drag it around with me. It's pretty cool. They actually gave us a seat decal number one and the row letter of your last name. So I got row L, seat one, and everybody got one of those.

While we were building the ballpark, the park is pretty well a brick structure. I mean, it's structural steel, but the facade is mostly brick, red and buff, tan-colored brick. And every brick in the stadium was stamped Coors Field and the brick manufacturer's name. Obviously, that face of the brick was never exposed. It was always on the inside where you couldn't see it. But those kind of became collector items. I don't know how many of those walked off the job site, but we had people, like, I remember one day

walking along the construction fence, and some guy was, like, trying to barter his watch for a couple of bricks through the construction fence with us. It was kind of interesting. I assume that the stadium seat is not your actual office desk chair. It's just parked in a corner or something. It's a guest chair. Interesting.

Is there any padding on that? No, not on that one. Now, the seats, that was kind of interesting. A lot of the club seats and suite level suites seating had padding on them. And a lot of, I don't think a lot of stadium seats prior to that had a padded seat. That was kind of relatively new thing. And every seat I think had cup holders, which I remember also being a discussion about what a nice feature that was. Today, I think that's pretty commonplace. Yeah. I was going to ask you about any other

features that were innovative at the time or seemed new and bold that maybe now just come standard with every stadium? Yeah, I know one of the things being talked about a lot was the seating along the first base and third base lines. They kind of slightly tilted, not tilted, but angled the seats towards home plate prior to that. And maybe they did this in Baltimore, I don't know, but I remember it being discussed as a new feature. Most of the seams were built with the seats perpendicular to the field. So if you were sitting behind first base, your seat was perpendicular to the right field line instead of angled towards home plate. And these seats were all slightly angled toward home plate along the lines to give you a better vantage point of the home plate.

That's one of those things that it would have been innovative at the time. And then you think in retrospect, why wasn't that always the design to sort of draw your eye to where the action is taking place. But still, that means you guys got to be the innovators. And then they also had, you know, I don't know how many places had, you know, I think Toronto probably had it before, but you know, the dining room over right field, it's a really spectacular view to be able to sit down and have a nice full-service meal

and overlook the ballpark. And then they had outdoor seating below that, but that was a really cool feature. They had the Sandlot Brewery in the right field corner off the main concourse, which was a really huge attraction. It actually had its own micro brewery in the bottom right field corner built into an old building that was left to actually cut the corner off of the old student movers building with an existing building there. And they built a brewery on the ground floor, and then there was a restaurant kitchen on some of

the upper floors, I believe. So that was pretty cool. Oh, cool. Any other Coors Field memories we haven't covered? Were there any accidents, any close encounters? Accidents. I know that one of the things I was telling my daughter about was, you know, that was the first job I remember seeing a cell phone in the field. Take that for granted now. Every single worker on the job site has a cell phone. But I remember our two superintendents, the lead superintendents, having those huge white brick cell phones that were like two inches by three inches and eight inches long with a big antenna on it. That was kind of a new thing. So how many games have you gone to in Coors Field? Well, we ended up being transferred.

games have you gone to in Coors Field? Well, we ended up being transferred. We went to the, I don't know if the opening day game was March 31st or an exhibition game with the Yankees, March 31st, 1995, which we got pretty nice club level seats because I knew the ticketing manager and helped him out with some of the problems in his suite. But we ended up getting these great seats. And I remember riding up in the elevator with George Steinbrenner, with my wife and Kylie. Kylie's just a one-year-old, so that was pretty cool. But I think we caught probably half a dozen or 10 or 12 games before I got transferred to Florida. That was a lot of fun. Well, you built a beautiful ballpark, I would say. It was a success. I don't know if people have specifically cited the millwork as the reason, but I think it's the total package came together very nicely. And now it doesn't play

quite as crazily as it used to either. So that helps also. But I haven't actually been to Coors Field. I just have never spent more time in Denver than a layover. And it's one of my great regrets because everyone who's been there tells me it's beautiful. It always looks beautiful on TV. And I am looking forward to getting there whenever that happens. Yeah, I hope you get a chance. I have a couple more things I could probably share with you. Sure. I don't know if you knew there's a underground or not underground, but below the stadium seating behind the Rockies dugout, there's a pair of batting cages down there. So that's like, I guess when it's cold, people can go down there and warm up. But I remember having to track down

the AstroTurf for that. I guess it was such a small order and it really wasn't. But I remember last minute having to track down AstroTurf and having to try to find some secondhand AstroTurf. There were a couple of facilities that were getting rid of turf and we ended up picking up some AstroTurf secondhand. And was the AstroTurf the most difficult material you had to procure, or was there some type of wood or tile that was particularly pesky? The hardest part was having to get all of the woodwork for the bars and the restaurants and the Rockies offices fabricated in about six months and getting it installed. getting involved. So I spent a lot of time going to the Millwork Contractors shop in Chicago, and they had a subsidiary in Calmar, Iowa. So I spent a lot of time traveling back and forth to Chicago and Calmar, two or three trips to each place during that six-month period, physically going to see the product. We weren't going to believe that they were making the product.

Our project senior executive staff said, you're going to go and you're going to put your eyes on it. You're going to look at every piece and you're going to go through their production schedule and you're going to make sure that material gets here. And then when it got there, I had to make sure it got installed. So anything else you want to mention? Well, I think one of the cool things was, you know, having worked on the two prior projects, I was working on jails. And nobody really cares very much about jails or wants a jail in their community, but we all got jackets that had the stadium emblem on the back and then the contractor's name on the front,

and I'd be somewhat of a local celebrity. Go to the grocery store, and people are like, are you working on the stadium? And they want to hear about it. Everybody was so excited. There was so much energy. And then when you get to opening day and you can share that with your family and listen to people talk about, you know, what a wonderful facility is and how amazing

it looked, it was a true proud moment for our entire team that got to work on the project. If you think about it, you kind of went from building a jail for criminals to a jail for pitchers. That's a good point. What's your professional opinion of Marlins Park? There's certain parts of it that are really cool. It's great. So if you're in the lower deck, it's great. I had sat in the upper deck and didn't really, it's so cavernous and the attendance isn't always great. So when you're up there and there's not a lot of fans up there, it's so cavernous and the attendance isn't always great. So when

you're up there and there's not a lot of fans up there, it's not really a great experience. But when you're in the lower bowl, especially if you can get some of the seats that have the perks and benefits, it's a great experience. Were you aware of any great difficulties or holdups that were outside your purview or were you just so narrowly focused on your own tasks that you weren't aware of everything? There's always challenges. I mean, we were aware of everything because we sat in a meeting, you know, once a week and daily our team sat in a meeting every morning at 630 and everybody threw out what the problems were of the day and what we needed to overcome. Now, the good part is the architect had one person on staff the entire time. And then near the end of the job, they had two or three people

on staff and they were answering questions. We would write a question or request for information and they would try to answer it almost immediately. There's always problems in construction and design. But I mean, one of the things I got charged with at the end was something they ended up terming gaposis. And because I had the roofer and the sheet metal subcontractor, there ended up being, because of the nature of ballparks and the radiuses, especially around the home plate area, and then the corners in the outfield, there's all these gaps in the construction between structural steel and masonry, or you would have these voids and there had to be some way to cover them so that little children wouldn't get lost in them. So we would, somebody, you know, a

superintendent would call me and say, or call me on the radio and say, hey, I need you to come, you know, to right field, you know, club level or whatever, suite level on the right field, you know, first baseline and column such and such. And then it'd go out there and take a picture and then send it to our sheet metal contractor. And then we ended up having so many, they ended up bringing a mechanical press to the site to build and fabricate all of these shapes and pieces to close the gaps in the construction. So none of that's on any plans or anything. We just kind of did it on the fly. Have you come close to working on any other park?

Is there any park you would like to work on, or is there one you'd like to tear down personally? No. Some of the most fun projects you'll ever work on are sports facilities. I did get to work on a minor league hockey facility. After that, I built the hockey arena for the Florida Everblades in Fort Myers in the Naples area. And if I hadn't had the experience at Coors Field when we got hired and were assigned that contract, I would have said it was impossible.

But we went from a site in the middle of pretty much a forest over there, cleared the land, and were playing hockey in 10 1⁄2 months. It started to finish. So, yeah, that was an experience. I came off of Coors Field in 1995, and then I moved to Tampa and was working for a contractor there, and we were awarded that project. My family moved to Fort Myers for a year and we built a hockey arena that was a lot of fun too one other thing I forgot about that the turf that I most people

think of sod coming in cut pieces but the stuff all came in rolls and I remember it went down in a matter of a couple of days they used basically a tractor and they have a roll of turf that's, I would say about four feet wide. And they would end up having like a hundred feet of this on a roll. It looked like a huge bale of hay and they just roll it out. Maybe it wasn't a hundred feet long. Maybe it was only 50 feet long, but pretty amazing process. That was pretty cool to watch. I'm just thinking, I wish that we had some time-lapse footage of that being rolled out. It seems like it would be almost soothing, kind of like a zen rock garden,

except smoothing out grass. I'm sure you could find it. I remember there being some time-lapse video. It's probably online somewhere. The other thing that was cool about that stadium, it kind of happened with some of these other ballparks. The location of the stadium was in lower downtown Denver. And prior to the stadium construction, it was kind of an industrial warehouse district,

a place you probably wouldn't want to go. But the cool thing is we were building that stadium. You started to see these restaurants and microbreweries pop up all around it. And then by the time we were finishing construction, we had all of these brand-new restaurants within walking distance of the ballpark. It was a lot of fun. It does work. They do revitalize neighborhoods.

They really do. It was a transformation just in the short period of time I was there. I guess that made your lunch breaks easier at least. Right. Oh, Kylie wanted me to say something about the rock pile. Oh, okay. Sure. Did you know they have the rock pile out there in Centerfield?

Yes. When I was there it was a big deal because it was a dollar. Every game was a dollar. You could buy a seat in the rock pile. Kylie looked online last night, and she's saying some of these seats are going for as much as $35 a seat. So I thought that was crazy. I guess they just revitalized the neighborhood too much. It's out of people's price range.

I was watching a game last week or so, and I saw they put on the TV that Coors Field elevation 5,280 feet. And that's not exactly true. It's a little less. Up in the upper deck, there's a row of purple seats that go all the way around the perimeter, and that's the 5,280-foot elevation, the mile-high elevation. That was pretty cool. The elevation, I assume, didn't cause any troubles for you the way it does for pitchers? You didn't have like winded workers or something? You had to take frequent breaks because of the thin air?

I can tell you when I had to go from grade to the suite level, it was tough. The first few months I was there, it took some getting used to, as well as the dry weather. It was extremely dry. So I wonder if you'd have had to do construction projects on the road at the same time that you were building Coors Field. Maybe you would have had a tough time performing, just like the Rockies do when they're away from Denver. The other thing that they had because of the snow, I remember it was, I have some pictures of it snowing like the week before our opening day in April. They have, they put heat trace wiring in the field below the turf to warm the turf so that if it does snow, they can melt the snow.

All right. Well, I know that Kylie is planning to put together a photo album of some of your photos from that time and souvenirs from the construction. photos from that time and souvenirs from the construction. So she will post that in the Facebook group along with this episode, and I'll stick a link in the podcast post at Fangraphs. And now if anyone ever asks me if I know anyone who builds ballparks, I can put them in touch with you. So thank you very much, Brian. No problem. Good talking to you. And thanks to Kylie also. My pleasure. Thanks for calling. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five listeners who have recently pledged their support include Andrew S. Nelson, Matt Musea, Aaron Schaefer, Jessica Pritchett, and Nick Dyer. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild

and you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. If you're looking for something else to listen to, there's also a new episode

of the Ringer MLB show up today. Michael and I talked to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports about the trade deadline, who will and won't be selling, best players available, 2018-19 free agent class

shohei otani etc you can find that on the ringer mlb show feed keep your questions and comments for me and jeff coming via email at podcast of fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system congrats to zach cozart on making the all-star team and getting his donkey from joey vato and good luck to mike trout on his rehab assignment in single A. What would Mike Trout do if he played for Inland Empire? Don't have to send us that email question because it's about to happen in real life. Happy 4th of July to those of you celebrating. We will be back

later this week. It never seemed so strange. It never seemed so strange. It never seemed so strange. It never seemed so strange.