Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1292: Strat and Tats

Episode Date: November 6, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo‘s 2019 Steamer projections and turnover in the Astros front office and field staff, then (13:17) bring on Arnie Pollinger and Robin Perlow, husband and wife administrators of the 40-year-old SOMBILLA Strat-O-Matic league, to talk about the origins of the league, playing Strat on their first date, […]

You painted your sneakers, you talked to yourself You won't eat with me, cause you care for your health Well you wrote me a poem, and it didn't rhyme You're not as weird as you act all the time No, you're not as weird as you act all the time Hello and welcome to episode 1292 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast for Fangraphs presented by our Pitchman supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fab Grabs. Hello.

Hello. So last week I said that when we get to the off-season, we start doing these winter episodes, things can get a little weird. And we're not waiting long to get to the weird stuff, the off-the-beaten-baseball-path stuff. Today we have a few interviews lined up. The second one will be with an Effectively Wild listener named Chris Rankin, who has tattooed two baseball stats on his wrist. He has tattooed Chris Davis's 247 batting averages on his wrist, as well as Matt Chapman's defensive run saved total. We will ask him why he did this and what the significance of these numbers is to him. This is one of my favorite listener interviews I think we have done. But before we get to Chris,

we will also be talking about a Stratomatic League that goes back 40 years that has been in operation almost continuously since 1979 and that just started its 40th year of operation this past weekend. So we'll be bringing on the husband and wife team behind that league, Arnie Pollinger and Robin Perlow, to talk about its history. Stratomatic, of course, the popular tabletop game based on real baseball stats invented in 1961 by Hal Richman and was a formative influence for a lot of the baseball writers you know and love. And finally, I'll be bringing on Renny Gisarelli, occasional contributor to The Ringer and strat enthusiast and dermatologist to talk about learning sabermetrics from Stratomatic and tattoo removal, just in case

anyone wants to know. So this was probably not what you were expecting this episode to be about when we last spoke, Jeff, but podcast takes us in some unanticipated directions. That's right. And I don't laugh on my own very often. I don't know what's normal for people. I know what's normal for me. But when you forwarded me the tweets that chris sent the podcast showing his tattoos then that was a that was a good time i saw it a comedy show over the weekend and i think i still

laughed harder at my twitter account than i laughed at the comedy show so it's it's good and you know there's not a whole lot to to discuss right now sometimes we just sort of uh we kind of wing these things and we end up with like an hour and 15 minutes of banter i think we have maybe 20 seconds of banter to discuss before we get to these interviews because you know nothing happened it's just just all speculation and i think all the all the executives are just going to the gm meetings happening this week anyway so even though this could end up a busy week it was not a busy weekend so it's good to have a 40 year stratum hack league and it's good to have ridiculous tattoos that might have to be erased or

explained with alternate explanations than the actual truth. Yeah. Or cherished and brandished proudly for decades. Who knows? Yeah, right. That's the other more unlikely path that he could take. So yeah, I think we'll get to some of our annual drafts maybe a little later this week. We can talk about free agent projections and contracts and do some competitions so since there really hasn't been much actual baseball news i have only one thing to report which is that the 2019 steamer projections are out now they are produced by jared cross and they come out on fangraphs year. And it's something where there's no actual baseball going on right now.

Well, other than internationally in Arizona Fall League. But we can look forward to 2019 and anticipate what that season will look like. And so naturally, the first thing I did when the Steamer Projections came out was look at Williams' Astadio. And I have exported every player's steamer projection for 2019 and there are 505 guys who are

projected for more than 50 plate appearances and I have sorted them all by walk rate, by strikeout rate, and by three true outcomes rate, or walks plus strikeouts plus home runs over plate appearances. Guess who has the lowest figures in every single one of those columns

when I sort them in ascending order? It is our good friend, Williams Estadio. He, of these 505 guys, he has the lowest projected walk rate at 3.1%. That's not a lot, but it's like even Dee Gordon, who had a historically low walk rate this year, he's projected for a 3.5. So even that did not get him ahead of Astadillo. Now, strikeouts, obviously the area where Williams stands out more than anyone. So strikeouts, obviously the area where Williams stands out more than anyone. He is projected for a 6.2% strikeout rate and probably the best other contact hitter in baseball, Andrelton Simmons. He is at 9.2.

So Williams-D'Astadio is like two-thirds the strikeout rate of the next lowest projected strikeout rate. projected strikeout rate. If we put those things and home runs together and we sort by three true outcomes rate, Williams-Astadillo is at 12.1%. The next lowest is David Fletcher of the Angels and also Edgerton Simmons of the Angels. They are both at 17.6%. So about five and a half percentage point difference there between Williams and everyone else. And of course, I did the same thing when Asadio was first promoted, and he was also projected to be the lowest at everything. But at that time, we hadn't seen him do it at the major league level. So there was still some chance that, well, maybe he'll strike out a lot more at this level. He just won't be able to handle the pitching or something no that

didn't happen so this is who he is and who he will be and another last time we podcasted i updated everybody on williams estadio's winter league statistics he's playing in venezuela as he usually does since then he's had another 10 at bats a bunch of hits no strikeouts williams estadio is up to 68 winter league at bats with four walks, zero strikeouts, zero home runs. He's batting 368, slugging 471 on base of 423 over the weekend. He went three for 10 with four RBI, a double, no walks, no strikeouts. He stole a base. He stole a base last Thursday.

So Williams Estadio is on the move. And yeah, that's what I got for Estadio right now. He's second on his team in at bats with 68 he's tied with i don't know let's choose cesar valera i don't know who that is but he's got 66 at bats and valera is having a pretty good winter league himself he's batting the same as williams astudio 364 but valera has 11 strikeouts astudio zero i will uh i'll remind everyone zero i'm gonna keep saying that until it sinks in. Not a single strikeout. So there's only one other thing I wanted to mention.

I don't have a lot of information here, but there's just something that's interesting to me. We've talked before about how baseball prospectus Alam Mike Fast left the Astros. His contract expired or whatever it is. I think word spread in September Mike Fast was not going to return to the Astros. And so he became, after the end of the season, a sort of a front office free agent.

And he's not alone. So maybe the even more well-known Sig Meidel. I'll just read the intro from this Houston Chron article written by Chandler Rome. Houston Chronicle article, I should say. Published on Sunday. Kron article written by Chandler Rome, he's in Chronicle article, I should say, published on Sunday. Sig Meidel, the former NASA engineer who spearheaded the original analytics team commissioned by Astra's general manager, Jeff Luno, upon his hire in 2012, is leaving the organization.

Multiple sources with knowledge of the situation, said Meidel, allowed his contract with the team to expire and will pursue other opportunities. Meidel told MLB.com the decision was his alone. The Chronicle has also lured Ryan Hallahan, the club's senior technical architect, who joined Meidel and Mike Fast on that original analytics team in 2012, will leave the organization as well. Fast, formerly the team's director of research and development, departed the organization in September. Luna did not respond to a request for comment Sunday night. General manager meetings begin on Monday in Carlsbad, California.

So what we have is the Astros analytical team is coming apart. I don't know if it's fair to say it's hemorrhaging. And, you know, people move around every offseason, and usually it's not headline news. These are valuable people to organizations, but not valuable in ways that we can measure. So we don't talk about them all that much. valuable in ways that we can measure. So we don't talk about them all that much, but it is interesting to see three people leaving,

three high-ranking people leaving the Astros front office at a point when the team is in a wonderful spot, clearly the favorites in their division, really good farm system. It doesn't look like the Astros are going to be bad for a very long time. It's interesting to see people leaving now. It's a year after they won it all. So who knows? Maybe they want to explore other opportunities and try to make another team good. Could be all that there is to this. Could be lifestyle changes they want. But

it's just something to keep in mind when you think about what the working environment might be like in Houston. It seems that generally when people leave organizations, it's to go seek out a promotion or get out of baseball entirely. And it does not seem like that is the case here. involved as I work on my book, which has a chapter about the Astros and have been told certain things in confidence that I can't share publicly right now, but they may be in the book. But I will just say, I guess, that I've been given to understand that Hallahan is not leaving for another team. He is leaving baseball entirely by choice to pursue another occupation. But more generally, turnover is kind of a constant for most baseball teams. You know, there's the occasional front office that has Billy Bean and David Forst there for 20 years, and it never changes. But that's the exception. And there are relationships that wax and wane, and there are people who want different things than they had

wanted previously and a baseball front office is like any other office in a lot of ways and sometimes there are people who are just looking for reasons to move on for one reason or another and contracts are up and there are greener pastures and i'm sure that more detail will come out about these moves in the future, perhaps in my book, perhaps elsewhere. But it's not even just in the front office. There's also been some movement at the dugout level, which is, I think, for different reasons. But the Astros, to some extent, are a victim of their own success. And for example, Jeff Albert, who has been an important hitting coach for the Astros, he was just hired by the Cardinals. Dylan Lawson, who was a minor league hitting coach

for the Astros, has now been hired as the Yankees minor league hitting coordinator. Doug White, who was the Astros bullpen coach, he was just hired by the Angels to be their pitching coach. So it's something that every team has to deal with when it's successful, regardless of any personality issues. It's just if you're successful, other teams want to copy you and they want to hire your people. And forget about Chris Correa hacking you. This is just another way that you lose your knowledge and your secrets and your proprietary information because people move along. And even if they've signed an NDA that prevents them from actually taking that intellectual property,

they can recreate a lot of it because they have the knowledge. So it's hard to maintain an advantage. Yep. Okay. I should also mention maybe I've seen some speculation that this is Roberto Osuna related, that these departures stemmed from dissent about the Osuna trade. I don't believe that that's the case, which is not to say that there wasn't dissent about the Osuna trade. I think there was, but I don't think that these specific departures were precipitated by that dissent. I think it's just a combination of contracts being up and people not

always getting along and some differences in desired direction. So we will take a quick break, and we will be back to talk about Stratomatic, and then we will talk about tattoos. So we are joined now by Arnie Pollinger and Robin Perlow, the husband and wife members of one of the longest running Stratomatic leagues in the country, in the world. They just started their new season on Sunday, and this is the 40th year that this league has been in operation. Arnie, welcome. Thank you very much.

Happy to be here. And Robin, thanks for joining us too. Thank you for having us. So, Arnie, I guess since you discovered Stret first, can you give us your origin story with the game? Sure. I was a very young boy, probably, I think it was 1968. So I was nine years old, I guess, fourth grade. And back in those days, baseball, you know, was followed in the newspaper and, of course, magazines. There were just every spring, there were just literally dozens of baseball magazines all over the place. And so as a young baseball fan, you could just scoop up these magazines and precede an issue and so forth.

And Stratomatic had this ad. preceded issue and so forth and strata matic would uh... had this add they took out full-page ads in uh... all these magazines and they were very very enticing to to a nine-year-old you know played big league baseball games and it's not you know that we always realism and uh... fielding and running and hitting and and best of all you could send away for free brochure so like mrs pet that away for the brochure and, you know, must have read it dozens of times.

And finally, somehow managed to convince my father to pay for the entire 1968 Stratomatic season, which was a lot of fun. So that I was I've been hooked ever since. And so that was about 10 years before you actually started the league that is still in existence today. And Rob and I will ask you about how you met Arnie and joined that league in just a second. But Arnie, tell me how this league came together and who the original members were. Sure. So I've been playing off and on through my childhood with friends here and there and lots of solitaire leagues and so on, and then went off to college. And in the summer of 79, let's see, I guess I would have been finishing up my sophomore year in college.

I was attending the University of Pennsylvania at the time, but a bunch of my friends from Framingham, Massachusetts, we were all the same age. We all graduated high school the same year, and we were all home for summer vacation from college, working various summer jobs that you do when you're in college. And we said, hey, let know, let's, um, let's have a stratomatic league. And, uh, so we, we gathered in a friend's basement in Framingham and drafted,

uh, back then we drafted team by team. So you had everybody on the, on the team and you were able to draft four teams. There were six of us in the league, so each draft four teams. And to my secret, so Stratto's always a year behind, so we were drafting the 1978 set. Of course, that was, as any Red Sox fan will know, that was the heartbreaking season where Bucky Dent hit that back-breaking home run off Mike Torres in the one-game playoff. And so I actually had the first pick in the draft,

and for some reason I didn't pick the Red Sox. I picked the Yankees because I thought, you know, Guidry, who was 25-3, would be awesome. Pitching was the name of the game. And I've never forgiven myself for not drafting the Red Sox that year. So, yeah, so that was our first year. And then we played the summer League as a 50-game schedule. All six of us were attending Ivy League colleges at the time, so I coined the name SOMBILA,

which stands for Stratomatic Baseball Ivy League League Advanced. I had to tackle on the A there to make it alliterative or something. But, and after the season was over, we all returned to college and there was never really any thought to revive the league. It was just a one year, something to do in the summer to pass the time. And then lo and behold, two years later,

we were all graduating from college and most of us had resettled in the Boston area. So I said, Hey, let's revive the league. And, and, you know, one guy didn't want to do it, let's revive the league. And, you know,

one guy didn't want to do it anymore. So we found a replacement. But basically, we've been doing it every winter since then. We started the 79 was in the summer and then beginning in 81, 82. We've always been a winter league, something to do in the offseason to get through the snow. And Robin, it's almost the same question, I guess, when you met Arnie and when you discovered Strat, right? Because it was kind of the same time. Within about a week of each other. Yeah.

We met at a punk rock nightclub called Spit in Boston. And he asked me out later, a few days later, to go to a Yankee Red Sox game. And of course, I said yes. And I think it was a three-game series, and I actually had already had plans to go to the other two games. So I think I saw every game in that series. So I think I saw every game in that series. But we actually ended up playing Stratomatic on our first date because I had heard about it. Because I think on the radio, the Red Sox broadcasters maybe during the strike season were playing Stratomatic because they had nothing else to broadcast. So I had heard of it, and we discussed it, and we, I guess, ended up playing, I don't think it was a whole game, maybe just a couple of innings just so I could see what it was.

And then I joined, this was actually in June, and then I joined the league that fall. 1982. Actually, it's funny that you mention that, that 1981. So it was the 81 strike season. And I can actually remember during the strike, they actually set up a table at home plate at Fenway Park. And, you know, we're rolling the dice and playing games. And they actually were broadcasting on the radio

as though it was a live game. There was banter between the broadcasters, and then they would roll the dice, and there's a long fly ball, and it was pretty funny. They would spend two hours a day doing this. People were in withdrawal, desperate, I guess. So let's take this all the way in withdrawal, desperate, I guess. So let's

take this all the way back then to fundamentals because I don't know how much of our audience is familiar with Stratomatic. If you could just, you know, if somebody comes up to you, they're not in your league, they don't know what it is, they come up, they ask, how do you pass the time? And the winner, what is this game that you're so involved in? What is your league? What's sort of like your,

I don't want to say elevator pitch, but like your 60-second explanation of exactly what Strat stratomatic is how you play it and how it's uh how it's exciting because obviously you've been doing this for decades and a lot of people might not have even ever heard of it at all who are listening to this right now sure all right i've got my stopwatch 60 seconds so stratomatic is a it's a very realistic baseball game that is played with dice and cards. You can, of course, play it on the computer now. But every player, Major League player, has their own individual card that is rated according to how they fared during the entire previous season

versus left-handed pitching, right-handed pitching, left-handed hitting, right-handed hitting. There's fielding. Players are rated according to their range as well as their propensity to make errors. Their hitting card, of course, it's very realistic for all kinds of results that you can get when you're playing. And you can even have injuries. Players who are injured more often have a higher rate of injury. So I guess I'm at 60 seconds, 55. I think that's sufficient. And now I'll ask a follow-up so you can even add more information. So now, of course, this being 2018, there's data on almost everything.

But how have you seen player ratings evolve over time? How did they measure player defense? How were those rated, say, in 1983 versus what you have for now? You have your 2017 player card set, right? So how subjective have these things been over time versus now, I guess, maybe more analytical? It's a good question. The creator of the game, Harold Richmond is his name. I think he goes by Hal. He is wonderfully knowledgeable about baseball, and he and, I guess, some of his assistants literally create all of the ratings. And it's a

proprietary formula, but it's based on scouting reports and watching the games. And whatever their system is, it works. I can remember back in the early 80s, there was a shortstop named Gary Templeton. You remember him? He was a 1E42. What that means, he was a 1. He had spectacular ranges, you know, among the best in the game, but E42 is ridiculously high. He made probably close to 42 errors. So he would, you know, and that was realistic that year.

So the E ratings, I think, are pretty close to how many errors you actually made over the course of the year, probably prorated if you're a part-timer. And then the ranges are just one, two, three, and four. Ones are your goal glovers, the best and the best. Fours are pretty bad. is the best and the best fours are pretty bad. And so most fans, if you watch games closely and you know, the players, you could probably guess what the ranges are for many players. Of course, we always disagree, especially when it's one of our players and we, we think they got screwed, but you know in general, it's pretty accurate and yeah. yeah, and we just go by what they say, even if we disagree,

you know, we don't cross it out. Whenever you enter a relationship with someone, you either adopt their interests and their friends, or you do the best job you can of feigning interest in their interests and their friends. Robin, as you joined this pre-existing league with friends whom you inherited by meeting Arnie, at what point did it become something that was important to you? And did you get into it as much as everyone else was into it and enjoy the rivalry, even though you had kind of come in after the fact a little bit? the rivalry, even though you had kind of come in after the fact a little bit? I did. And there was another new player who joined the league the same time I did. And they lowered their standards because neither of us attended Ivy League schools, but they let us in

anyway. But I would say, you know, pretty early on, I was interested in it and enjoyed it. And I did my first season, I shared a team with an established league member. And we actually won the World Series, and I have not won it since. She's a pre-16 Chicagoago cubs of the songbilla so i wanted to to ask you had said earlier that you you had six members and you drafted four teams so right now you were you said you're a year behind you're you're playing with 2017 information but are you are you drafting teams or are you drafting players and i guess i have a follow-up to that i don't know a good question so 1985, whatever that was, the fifth year of the league, I guess,

we expanded from six to eight teams, and at that time we decided to go to what we call now a permanent league. So we held a 35-round player-by-player draft, and we stopped doing team- team and we, we started drafting individual players so that now everybody has a 45 man roster, which you keep from year to year. And then as you go to a new year, we, we have a 10 round draft and you cut basically 10 players, sometimes a few more, uh more if you've made trades. So, yeah, so it's a permanent league.

And the draft each year will feature, you know, mostly high, you know, all the rookies in their first year, as well as free agents, maybe that used to be on somebody else's team, and then they had a bad year and they got cut, and now they're good again. So it's kind of a mixture in the draft. So can it be, presumably, as avid Stratomatic players, you are both also baseball fans and so you're paying attention to the most recent baseball season. Is it, I don't know what the right word is, but can it be sort of difficult for your brain?

Because, you know, some players get a lot better between years, some players get a lot worse. You have a case like, I don't know, this year's max muncy who comes out of nowhere now max muncy is not going to be relevant in your current stratomatic league but you know next season can it be difficult to kind of switch between being aware of 2018 baseball versus 2017 baseball when you're making your decisions i'll let robin answer too i guess i think the hardest time right now it's not difficult because we just started playing with the 2017 card set, which we will do through the end of February when our regular season ends and then the playoffs are in March. I think it does become a little bit more difficult in March, February, March, when it's time you start scouting

and the baseball spring training starts. And then we have, we hold our draft right before the regular season begins in April. And so, especially if you're in the hour post season, then you're trying to scout for the upcoming draft, but you're also trying to prepare for the playoffs of the 27, you know, using the 2017 car that can get,

yeah, that gets a little, a little crazy sometimes, but it's good. It means you're in the playoffs and it's always fun. And we try to draft right before the regular season starts, although this year we drafted a few days after because the season started early. And I recall one season, we drafted maybe 10 days after the start of the regular season, and Juan Nieves had thrown a no-hitter. So I scooped him up thinking he was going to be great and was not so great. So the 40th year started officially on Sunday, right?

So take us into the scene. I mean, what does a game look like? Is everyone there? Is it just a few owners? What's the sort of setup for one of these meetings? Yep, good question. So, well, since a quarter of the league lives here at our house, we typically have opening day here. We also hold the draft here.

And everybody in the league except for one owner who lives down in Maryland lives in the greater Boston area. The Maryland guy was part of the original Sambilla, and he moved down there, so he plays on the computer. But everybody else lives around here, so we had six people show up, and each series is four games. So it's a four-game series that will take – the average game takes 40 to 45 minutes. So four others, in addition to Robin and I, showed up here around 1 o'clock yesterday.

And, you know, there's beer and we have music and munchies and people pair up. I create the schedule at the beginning of the year. So we all pair up. I create the schedule at the beginning of the year, so we all pair up, and it's loud and fun, and you hear a lot of dice, and maybe there's some swearing. But it was good. Robin and I both won three out of four yesterday, so we're tied for first.

So, of course, the most important questions here. You have a World Series champion every single season. You've been playing this long enough. Have you come up with your own? You must have a trophy. What's the price? Yes, we call it the Richmond Cup, named after Harold Richmond, who created Stratomatic. But we're into our second trophy.

We started with a plaque, which was nice that somebody bought. But then we ran out of space after I don't know how many, 15, 20 years. It filled up. So we got a new trophy. It's just your standard trophy if you go to a trophy store. It's nice looking. And everybody who wins has their name and the year and the team name. And one of the nice traditions is whoever owns the trophy tries to get it engraved for the new person, the new winner's team name.

And then we present it at the draft. So, yeah, it's a nice little trophy. We don't play for money. Some leagues, I think, play for money. We just play for glory. Yeah, it's a nice little trophy. We don't play for money. Some leagues, I think, play for money. We just play for glory. And are you aware of leagues that have been around even longer? I mean, is this extremely unusual to have kept a single league together for this long? It is. There are a couple of leagues that have been around. It's been a while since I looked that up. You caught me off guard with that question, but there are a few. We're definitely among the oldest though. Yeah. I read about one of the I-75 league, I think, that has been around for many years and

the Capital Baseball League that started in the mid-70s. The Greater United States Stratomatic Organization, I think, goes back to 71, but it's hard to go back much further than you all go back. So has the enjoyment of playing Strat diminished at all? Are you doing this still just as much because you enjoy the game or are you doing it primarily because it's a way to stay in touch with your friends and have this social activity, which is difficult to do to find ways to see people that you like from college and earlier for this long in your life. Some of both, too. Yeah, I would agree that it's both.

Because we only play in the winter, right? So by February and March, you're a little burnt out, ready for real baseball to start, and the weather starts getting nice and you want to be outside. So it's good. We take the summer off. You know, some of these other leagues, you'll see they play, you know, full 162-game schedule year-round.

That would just wipe me out. I can't imagine doing that. But, you know, by now, by the time October rolls around, it's like you get the fever and ready to start playing again. So let's say, I know that we're all adults here, you don't often meet strangers, but there's still opportunities to meet strangers. Let's say you're meeting someone, I don't know where, you're friendly, you're having conversations. How long does it take into getting to know someone before you talk about the fact that you run a stratumatically? I mean, we're interviewing you right now because of this particular reason,

but is this something you'd wear on your sleeve? It's obviously not something you hide in the closet, but how long does it take before you find out about the existence of the sleeve and how active you are? That was a knowing laugh. I, it is. Yeah.

I, I, yeah. It's most people would just don't, would not understand, you know, I don't actually advertise it a lot because people say, well, what is that?

It's just, you know, it's a real nerdy thing. And I don't know, even among our friends who, who like baseball a lot. I don't know, even among our friends who like baseball a lot. I don't know, Robin, if you have another answer for that. I would say I don't hide it, but it's not usually something that comes up in the course of conversation.

I'm sure many of my friends are unaware. But, you know, if they were interested, I would be happy to talk about it. I mean, think of yourself, you're at a party, right? And, you know, you're just making small talk with people maybe you don't know. It's like, well, what do you, you know, what do you do for the, even I already bore them and they start rolling their eyes when they ask me what I do. I'm an actuary. And, you know, the next question that most people ask is, well, what's an actuary? So I've already, you know, once I started explaining, they've already, you know,

they're looking around to try to see who else they want to talk to. So if I started to then talk about stratomatic baseball, forget it, you know, I'll be sitting all by myself on the couch. Yeah, I wouldn't say normally it would be the best thing to lead with, but you did play on your first date and you're still married. So it seems like I guess there's some advantage to just putting it out there. But we will link to your league website. You also have a large amount of writing and record keeping and stats that you have kept really for the entire league's existence. This site is sort of a clearinghouse for the whole history of the league. And I would imagine that it's been a lot of effort to keep all that information, but it must be a really fun thing

to be able to look back at 40 years of your life or part of your life and see all of it kind of kept in detail here and be able to relive some of these seasons and some of your victories or losses? Yeah, the biggest effort was, I would guess, sometime in the early to mid-90s, I guess, when the internet started, and I literally had to type in all of this stuff from all the years leading up to that. That was a big project. But once I got all that uploaded, then, you know, year by year after that wasn't as difficult.

But yeah, I do a lot of studies and stories and articles andratomatic or Sambilla related. And that's, yeah, that's always a lot of fun. A lot of interesting ideas. So where are the most heated rivalries in the league? It could be between you two, but who's, you know, which teams hate each other the most? And which teams are, I don't know, maybe more like siblings across leagues? I don't think I'm too hated since I haven't won the World Series since 1983. I would say my nemesis is Future Wax.

It's the name of their team. It's actually three guys. One here is local. He's the manager. And then the other two general managers, I guess you would say, they live in California. They used to be from around here. And I don't know.

They're my nemesis. I won my first championship against them. And last year I was in the World Series and I lost in seven games. And I really had my chances to win that seventh game. I should have won it. I definitely thought about that much of the summer. But, yeah, and it's, well, he may listen, so I don't want to say anything negative.

But the style, well, maybe I will. The style of play, he's very, very slow and deliberate. I can remember, he's gotten a little better over the years, but I can remember in years past literally bringing a book, a fiction book that I would happen to be reading, and I would literally bring it, and every time he would get into one of his deliberations, you know, I'm going to take somebody out,

and he'd look up all the sheets. I just pull out my book. There's a little bit of gamesmanship. So basically like real baseball. Yeah, you have a pace of play problem in you, Stratomatically. That's right. So for both of you, has the existence of this league and your experience with Strat deepened your love for and appreciation of baseball and your knowledge and understanding of baseball? Is it more of a manifestation of the pre-existing

love and knowledge that you had? Or would you say that part of your continued love of baseball owes itself to Strat to a certain extent? I guess, Robin, I'll start with you. I would think the latter because when now, I mean, I'm a Red Sox fan. I have always been a Red Sox fan. But now you're also kind of scouting every time you watch baseball. So you're a little more aware of other teams, other teams' players, because you're kind of watching them to see if this is someone you want to draft at the next draft, if they're available. So I would say it has expanded my interest and knowledge in baseball. And Arnie? I would agree with that. I mean, I think not just yet. We're always, you know, we'll be watching games.

Ooh, I'm scouting this guy. Maybe even some obscure reliever that I've never heard of that comes in with he's got really good stats. Or just looking at knowing the fielding, you know. So, again, it's the non-Red Sox people that we don't often see. And knowing that, I don't know, who's a one shortstop that we don't see much of. You know, you have a couple of ones. Well, I have Orlando Arcea.

Yeah, like there's, that's a pretty obscure guy, at least until the postseason. Yes. You know, he spent part of the season in the minors after I drafted him. Yeah. I have bad news about his next season player card. I'm aware. He's a good prospect, but just knowing, you know, seeing, uh, you know,

Stratomatic already thought he was a really good fielder and not really being aware of that and then seeing it on TV. So, yeah, I think it's definitely expanded my appreciation. All right. Well, I'm glad that we could talk to you. I'm glad that you've kept this going for so long. It is inspiring to see anyone keep a serious hobby going this long and to keep friends involved in something. Just in my own fantasy baseball experience long ago, I know how hard it was just to organize these things and keep people interested year after year and have them be active participants. So to have done that for 40 years is pretty impressive. And it's great that it is still

so fun for you. And that has led to this really rewarding, enriching part of your lives, it sounds like. So I hope that you have many more years to come. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. And thanks for having us. We're quite honored. You know, I definitely listen to the podcast. And so it's cool being here. Thank you. I hope that your rival is able to hear this, maybe speed up a little bit next time he's playing against you. I'm not telling him. All right. Thanks to both of you for coming on. Thanks. All right. So stay tuned.

After a quick break, we will have a tale of two tattoos and a baseball fan who is proudly displaying stats on his skin. Why'd you get that tattoo, girl? To save you time No more tears to cry No more long goodbyes for you Why'd you get that tattoo? Okay, so we are joined now by Chris Rankin. As he speaks to us now, if he were to hold his arms out, palms up on his right wrist would be 29 ERS. That is Matt Chapman's defensive run saved total in 2018.

And on his left wrist is 247, four times separated by slashes. Of course, known to all listeners of Effectively Wild as Chris Davis's batting averages for the past four years. Chris now has these tattooed on his arms, possibly forever, at least for the foreseeable future. Chris, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. This is exciting, and I guess all it took was me to deform my body with silly stats to get on a podcast. Yeah, worth it, I guess. I don't know. Maybe. We'll see. I think so. Hopefully it doesn't start a trend. But I think we both feel somewhat responsible for this. You've been listening to the podcast for years since the beginning or

close to it. And I saw that you tweeted a Matt Chapman article that Jeff had written. And so I don't know whether we have helped contribute to this or not. I know that you are a longtime A's fan and presumably you are a Matt Chapman appreciator and a 247 batting average every year appreciator anyway, but what moved you to put these stats on your body? So I got the Matt Chapman tattoo because ace fans don't often get a legitimate superstar to root for. And what he did in the field this year defensively has to probably be a top five all time for a third baseman, at least since the stat has been tracked.

I don't know off the top of my head. And I fell in love with DRS this year when I got to speak with David Forst, the general manager of the A's at a season ticket holder event. And I asked him in a vacuum, I'm like, so if you could only look at one defensive metric to judge a player's success, what would it be? And he said it'd be DRS. And we actually had probably about a 10-minute conversation about why he likes DRS over UZR. And a lot of it had to do with the way the Coliseum is and the way they employ shifts and the way they view defensive alignment. So I'm like, hmm, all right, DRS. I trust David Forrest. He seems to be a knowledgeable baseball gentleman. So you know what? I'm going to like DRS. He didn't realize that you were asking if you

could only look at one stat every time that you look at your wrist for the rest of your life. Right, right. I haven't decided if I'm going to show him that I've done this. I'm still in the phase where I think this is a good idea. Yeah, this is a good idea. Oh my goodness, this is a terrible idea. And the Chris Davis one, my brother and I have been kind of tracking this 247 before the FiveThirtyEight article was written about it. And you know, you on this podcast, it was a thing as well. And there was a t-shirt even that was made. And it is the most awesome thing ever. I mean, it's so insanely rare. There aren't even any odds for it.

I mean, how can it happen? I mean, I guess if he did 247 again next year, I would probably get it added on to the bottom because I've ran out of risk to real estate on one line. So I will be getting 247 as long as he continues to hit it every year. These tattoos that came apart though, I was one of the gentlemen I play auto new with his name, Spencer. He's a friend of mine told me I should get a tribute tattoo for the a's and i'm like i'm not really a sports tattoo guy but i am you know a baseball fan and an ace fan and these just seemed unique enough to to really do it so do you think that this opened the door to get other i mean like clearly these are the two top a's fun facts at least that we're aware of connected to 2018 and for chris davis three previous seasons as well but do you think that this opens the door to get other tactics like do you are you would you

be hunting for them now or is this like the cream of the crop and you are settled on these and there's there's no other option unless something incredible happens in like 2019 or beyond yeah i'm probably inclined to not get any more unless something spectacular happens like if the a's won the World Series, I wouldn't get a World Series tattoo or anything like that. I'll leave that to the regular normal people that cherish those sort of accolades. Like I said, Chris Davis said 247 for the next year. I'd definitely do that. I figured with the DRS, it'd be really hard for Matt Chapman to have a higher DRS than that this year. So I would be okay getting this. If he gets a higher one, I probably won't get another one.

He just won a gold glove. So I suppose that's good. I wouldn't know what was one of those, like you don't know until the spirit moves you. I will probably get a Mike Trout tattoo of his face somewhere on my body eventually in my life. Maybe on your face. Have a face-off sort of situation. Maybe by that time, we'll have the technology to really do a face-off situation where I can just put the Mike Trepp tattoo on my face. I think those are called masks, though, so I've never already been invented. So I guess I have some, I don't know if it's good news or bad news, but I looked at the steamer projections for Chris Davis for 2019, and he is projected to hit 239 in 2019. Now, I was so curious about how someone who has hit 247 for four consecutive years would be projected to hit 239 that I contacted Jared Cross, who does the steamer projections, and he said, well,

it's an aging thing. Davis is going from 30 to 31, and that can affect your BABIP. And then the strikeout rate is just increasing every year across the league. So it just gets harder and harder to hit a certain average that you have hit before. And it's complicated. They're projecting all these different aspects of his performance and then calculating the average that comes from those things. But if you believe the projections, the rest of your wrist is safe. That's good, because I'm going to be honest, I really wouldn't want another one down there. Well, that's what I assumed when I saw this, that you were probably someone who has a lot of tattoos, and this is just, you know, add it to the list. But we were just talking to you before we started

recording, and that is not the case. You do not have many tattoos and these are your first visible tattoos. Right. Yeah. These are the first ones that you can see without some effort or knowing me intimately. And I actually felt comfortable. I'm a teacher, a middle school teacher. And all the other teachers when I started that school had tattoos all over their body. So I'm like, oh, oh i could do this and then this opportunity came or choice not opportunity um came to put these on my body and uh so i i just did it and the wrist seemed like a good place i mean i i don't know where else i could have done them because it is very small but it's prominent i haven't had anybody come up and recognize them yet which is probably a good thing because i don't know. I'm having a hard enough time explaining my reasoning to you two and you guys are baseball nerds.

So the regular Joe Schmo or Jane Schmo on the street would be a little more difficult and probably look at me like I'm a crazy person. My fiancée has some coordinates tattooed on the underside of her wrist and she now wishes that she didn't have them. She had this whole plan and it didn't come to fruition but she for whatever it's worth uh many people haven't noticed them unless she's called attention to them because how often are you really looking at the underside of somebody's wrist so you know there's the possibility that these are going to be more subtle than you think but of course you're going to see them every single day for the rest of of

your life and it's going to be interesting to see how your own opinions of these fun facts evolve because, you know, you're still in that honeymoon period. You think this is funny, but also terrific. But you're also going to live a lot longer probably than you have lived in the time since you got these tattoos. Well, luckily, the DRS one will be covered with a watch most of the time once it heals properly. But I will always be staring at the 247. So that one will be with me. And I'm actually the most fond of that one. The DRS is also because I'm not a huge fan of batting average is a metric to gauge hitting success. And so the DRS I think is a little more fun and more where I'm aligned with ideologically with baseball.

So it makes me feel good to have that one on me, but the 247 is the one that I'm aligned with ideologically with baseball. So it makes me feel good to have that one on me. But the 247 is the one that I'm absolutely smitten with. And being on this podcast was fantastic because as I mentioned, I'm a teacher and a lot of the students think my voice sounds like a famous Fortnite streamer on Twitch. And so I can point to this podcast and be like, no, see, I'm my own famous person because I'm on a world-famous podcast with world-famous baseball-y minds. So, yeah, I mean, I thought I was the most obsessed person with the 247s, but you have topped me. Yeah, my brother and I are pretty obsessed. Yeah. Well, so tell me about the process because, for one thing, there's some redness here.

This looks like it was probably pretty painful. So tell us how much pain you endured to put this on your wrist. And what did you tell the tattoo artist? And how did you explain what you wanted and why? I mean, I'm sure they're used to hearing all sorts of things, but this has to be unusual. Right. So the picture with the redness was taken probably two minutes after the artist got finished. And my partner, she was going to get a much larger tattoo that she's been bandying about for a long time. And it was taking hours and I got bored. And I'm like, you know what? Let me see if I can do it. I'm ready. I

can do this. I'm in the mood to do this. I'm in a tattoo shop just waiting. So I might as well get something done as well. So they don't normally do walk-ins. This is a fairly well-known tattoo place in Oakland. And so I said, hey, does anybody want to do a tattoo that will probably only take them, you know, 15 minutes? And I don't particularly care how wonderful it looks because it's just going to be writing and it honestly is just for me. So you're saying that getting a tattoo was an impulse decision.

That is... No, well, this was an impulse. This particular day was an impulse. I'd been throwing this one around for a bit. But the gentleman who did it, I told him what I wanted and he gladly obliged and fit him on there. And he's also, what's the DRS stand for? And so I began to explain to him about DRS and what DRS was and the idea behind it and why I think it's a good metric. And he just looks at me, he's like, look, man, I don't care at all. And I'm like, okay.

And then it was awkward silence for the next 10 minutes as he finished the tattoo. And so I didn't even begin to spit the 247. So I wish there was some connection we had. And he was a huge Asian, did not care at all. And actually pretty much told me to be quiet. I feel like if he had three 247s in a row, it could be like, oh, this is just Orlando Garcia's actual triple slash line. Anyway, I was curious.

You have Matt Chapman's 29 defensive runs saved. Of course, I see it on your wrist. That's one of the reasons that you're here. So Matt Chapman this year had 29 defensive runs saved in 1,273 and two-thirds innings. Last year, as a rookie, Matt Chapman had 19 defensive runs saved in 727 innings. If you extrapolate what Matt Chapman did last year to this year's number of innings, he would take his DRS up to 33. So, Chris, I'm asking you, of course, there was a larger sample in 2018.

Matt Chapman was an everyday player, but which defensive run saved season of his do you consider more impressive well it's really interesting nobody's ever asked that before i mean i'll probably take the the 29 just because that total in and of itself is still massive and has hardly ever been done i know manny machado and i think nolan arenado did it in the same season when they both just went bonkers but um you know I think this year would have been even higher if he didn't. He was very clearly having issues. He had the offseason surgery. And I'd like to think, at least in my mind, I'd like to think that his DRS would have been even higher if he wasn't being nagged by, you know, the end of the season injuries and just the toll the insanely long baseball season has on people.

So I will go ahead and take his complete season as the more impressive of the two. Although his rookie season, I guess technical rookie season, was bonkers. Absolutely bonkers. Yeah. And put pretty much everybody, the entire baseball world, on notice that there was a new gun to the third base, the hot corner in baseball. Yeah. gun to the third base, the hot corner in baseball. Yeah. So he is tied for fourth all time for the highest single season DRS, which goes back to 2002. He is tied with the great Sean Figgins in 2009.

And I almost, I hesitate to tell you this, but because I'm worried about what further tattoos it might lead to. But there is a StatCast enhanced version of Defensive Run Saved that is not available to the public. It's called SDRS, StatCast DRS, with a lowercase s in case you need to tattoo it anywhere. And Jeff and I have access to this because we are fielding Bible Award voters, so they unlocked the StatCast DRS for us. And Chapman, although he has a 29 regular DRS, he has a 35 StatCast DRS. So I don't know whether you need to cross this out, find a new spot for the 35. I believe he led the majors with 35 StatCast DRS this year.

Does that change your thinking at all? I mean, maybe, but it's such a simple tattoo. I could probably just get a fine print Sharpie and just do a little self-tattooing. And whenever I want to go out, if I have a hot date or something, and I want to make sure I'm current and be like, oh, this is the StatCast one. That's pretty cool though. Thank you for sharing that. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Well, does either the 29 or the 247s, I mean, do they have any larger significance to you other than the fact that they're A's and you like the A's and they're fun facts? I mean, like, does the 247 stand for something about the universe and existence to you that it's so improbable that this happened and looking at it reminds you that anything is possible or am I reading too much into this? Oh, you're reading way

too much into it. I didn't put that much thought. No, it's just, it's so cool just that it happened. And, you know, t-shirts are awesome. And, uh, I, you know, of course, when, if those become available again, I want to purchase one, but, um, the tattoo just seemed one more step. I, you know, I'm not known. Is it like a crazy person who does crazy things? This is probably one of the more off the wall things I've ever done in my life. But, uh, yeah, I I'm, I yeah, I'm happy with it. It's probably,

honestly, my last tattoo I'll ever get, I think. I tend to take life advice from Ray Bradbury in The Illustrated Man Did Die at the End. So I think I'm probably content here with my two wrist tattoos and other hidden gems. I do want to point out that I think a lot of crazy people would say that they're not crazy aside from all the crazy things that they've done. So, you know, you're on a certain path. So you said that you went into this very famous tattoo parlor and your partner was getting something more elaborate. It was a few hours of work, like, you know, a standard ornate tattoo. And you sort of had some sort of impulse purchase, if you will, impulse tattoo.

impulse purchase, if you will, impulse tattoo. So I don't know if you and your partner had discussed your potential impulses going in, but what has been the response after the fact? You know, your partner knows you on a pretty intimate level, I would assume, is aware of your other tattoos, I would assume, has probably heard you talk about Matt Chapman and Chris Davis at some point, I would assume. But you know, there's pre-tattoo and then there's post-wrist tattoo. So how have those conversations gone? If you've acknowledged them even at all? So she had no idea that I was going to get this tattoo. She's, we're both a season ticket holder.

She's a budding baseball fan in general. She, I taught her how to keep book at games. So that's been something she's really kind of gone with. So she understands my love for baseball and my love for stats and the quirkiness of baseball. You know, I still have a very romantic notion of baseball in general, the greater idea of baseball and what it's done historically to our country and helped our country get through at times. So I think that she, well, first of all, laughed

hysterically when she saw them. And I think it was a good laugh. It was a laugh, but I think it was a good laugh. And she said she loved them and she said, the script's really pretty, but it was almost in a way like, oh, that's really pretty script. Like you would tell a child when they drew something horrific, but you didn't want to hurt their feelings. And they hurt so bad. I mean, full disclosure, I'm a wuss, but these over the wrists were painful. Yeah. So I'm good for a bit. You put this on Twitter and gotten a positive response, but what about other people in your life? You haven't been back to the school yet, right? Since you got these. So what will you tell the kids? What will you tell

your family? Will they ask? Will they be horrified? Will they be curious? So I haven't told my mom. I'm going to see her. She lives in the Monterey Bay, which is about two hours south of Oakland. I'll see her this weekend and I'll show her and she will say something like, oh, Christopher, you're a moron in the motherly way. My brother, who is a massive baseball fan and ardent listener of this podcast, who will be listening to this, told me I am a complete moron. And yeah, he's shown no interest in hearing my reasoning behind it and pretty much just said, you're an idiot and you're going to regret this forever. The school will be fine with it. They probably honestly won't even notice. And the kids will notice and anything to get them from, keep them from calling me a Fortnite

streamer, a game that I have never played. Certainly know it exists because that's all they talk about. But yeah, so that's the rundown. Oh, and my friends have all gotten a good chuckle out of it. They're mostly baseball fans, too, so they understand and appreciate it. This could be a way to get the youth interested in baseball if we get all the middle school teachers to get baseball stats tattooed on themselves so that kids will be curious about what is this thing that my teacher is tattooing on themselves. It's too bad you're not a math teacher because you could probably get a lesson plan out of the 247 in probability. Yeah, it would probably be a good one. I wouldn't even know where to begin to start

how to adequately teach our youth about any sort of mathematics, let alone semi-complicated statistical stuff. If you're interested, maybe down your back, you could tattoo the differences between F-war and B-war, And then that would be really useful. You could just take a picture. So I can't drive almost anywhere in Portland without seeing a billboard for a tattoo removal service. I feel like I don't even have to ask a question because you can sort of see where this is going. But you know, you get a tattoo and you think this is something I've done for the rest of

my life. It's apparently not necessarily true. Do you, how much do you know about tattoo removal? I don't know anything about tattoo removal. I just see the boards. So I know they exist. I've never looked into it. I suspect that the cost and the pain of getting it removed will prohibit me from ever doing it. getting it removed will prohibit me from ever doing it. I think it would have to be something significant, like maybe I would get a job for the government. And this 247, 247, 247,

247 were like the nuclear codes and I couldn't have them on my body. And it was just an egregious error and it would keep me from getting this position, I'd probably get it removed. But right now, it's just one thing that makes me unique and stand out, which honestly is like the last thing I actually want is to stand out and be in a crowd and have to talk about stuff. But here I am. And like you said, I'm still in the honeymoon phase, but I'm very aware that this comes across inherently silly to most people. But I've had a really good

time with it. And the amount of people that have reached out to me through direct message on Twitter and other social media has been really positive. And I even got the response from the Oakland A's saying an official score. Did you see that? Yeah, I saw that. What did they say? It said something to the effect of official score change. This year was 248. Sorry about that. And it was really neat that the A's did that.

I think that may be a benefit of liking a small market team that has not as much stuff to talk about because obviously they're not going to sign Bryce Harper or Manny Machado and do stuff like that. So, you know, they're more concerned with who's going to catch and maybe what their second baseman and starting pitching situation is. And what weirdo local weirdo got random tattoos of stats on his wrists that are a tribute to the team in a weird way. Right.

I guess the last one, and again, it's, it's still so new to you, but have you begun to consider possible imaginative alternate explanations of your tattoos? Like, you know, what if Matt Chapman becomes like a mass murderer and Chris Davis turns into like some sort of frog? Or I don't know, something happens and you don't want to be associated with Matt Chapman and Chris Davis anymore. If you haven't considered yet, because honeymoon phase, are you looking forward to sort of the creative aspect of trying to make up reasons for why you have these tattooed on your wrists? Oh, yeah, that's a fantastic question. And it's actually been asked to me before. And I don't have anything yet, but I look forward to creating the most elaborate scenario with these tattoos and deeper meaning is to my life. I'll probably have a couple like the elevator pitch one, the more elaborate, meaningful one, and the completely inappropriate

reasons. But knock on wood, I don't have to do that. They both seem like very upstanding gentlemen that hopefully won't have anything like that occur. All right. Well, we are glad that you have made a decision that makes you happy. And we are glad that we got to talk to you about it. I admire your commitment to statistics and baseball stats. We share it, perhaps in a slightly different way, but we express these loves in our own ways. And anyone else who is considering this, please don't do it just to be a podcast guest. is considering this, please don't do it just to be a podcast guest. But if you have any questions about how to do this and how to go about it, you can find Chris on Twitter at thanks for 1984. I'm sure he would be happy to answer any and all questions and advise people to do this or not do

it. So Chris, thank you very much for coming on and sharing this part of your life with us. Gentlemen, I appreciate it. And keep up the good work. Your podcast is a true service to baseball fans. Well, thank you. So we will take one more quick break and we'll be back with our final guest, Randy Gisarelli. Talk more Tats and Strats. advice and keep the kids inside. Save your skin, now you can without an alibi. Save your skin, take my advice and leave the dogs outside. Cause here he comes, it's a bow on both of the preceding segments,

I am now joined by Baseball Perspectives co-founder, ringer contributor, stratomatic enthusiast, and practicing dermatologist, which makes him very well prepared for today's podcast, Randy Giserely. Hey, Randy, welcome back. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Ben. I have to admit that the topics we're going to be discussing are a little bit different than I had been led to believe when you asked me to come on earlier today.

Yeah, I asked you to talk about Stratton, and I said, oh, by the way, you're a dermatologist, you know about skin. So you have seen a lot of skin in your life. That is part of your job. That is my job, yes. You have seen parts of people that typically are not shown to the public. More than I care to admit, yes. So I assume you've seen a fair number of tattoos in your day. And I would think, given your background, that you would recognize a baseball-related tattoo, particularly a baseball stat-related tattoo. Have you ever come across anything like Chris's double Oakland A's tattoos?

So you sent me a picture of this a little while ago, and I think my immediate reaction was, oh my god. So that should answer that question. No, I've seen, you know, especially here in Chicago, a lot of 2016 Cubs championship logo tattoos. Yeah. Completely understandable. I do not have any tattoos myself. If I were, you know, gun to my head and forced to get one, it would almost certainly be a 2015 Kansas City Royals championship logo of some sort, a tattoo with the Chris Davis 247 slash line. And then the funniest thing about this, honestly, at least when I saw that tattoo, I knew what it was immediately.

Yeah. The other tattoo, 29DRS. I mean, 29 is not even a historically significant number. Andrelton Simmons has been at 42. 29, really? That's worth scarring your body for life? Okay.

What would be the stat that you would get to represent the 2015 Royals? I'm trying to think. It would probably have something to do with the number of late-inning comebacks in the playoffs. Yeah. It might be the tweet of their win expectancy. There were like eight different games where their win expectancy had dropped under like 15% in the playoffs,

and they came back to win those games. But you know, flags fly forever. But, you know, flags fly forever. I'm sorry, but Chapman's DRS is not going to be flying a pennant anywhere near Oakland Stadium anytime soon. Yeah, you could just get the win expectancy graph from one of their comebacks or like the 2014 wildcard game or something. Yeah, that would be pretty good. So tattoo-wise, just given your expertise as a skincare professional, I don't know, that seems like something that people say about cosmetic skincare people, but dermatologist, tell me about tattoos. How do they work? And just in case anyone is interested in knowing in the future, how does tattoo removal work and how painful is it and what are the options out there?

Well, with the caveat that I do not actually perform tattoo removal myself, the reason for that is basically that the way to remove it is with laser technology. And the lasers, especially the newest technology lasers, are quite effective. They're also, the machines are extremely expensive. So you either do a lot of it or you do none of it. And I have not gotten into that. So what is tattoo, right? Basically, it's pigment. Generally, it's some sort of ink pigment in microscopic droplets that are placed under the surface of the skin.

And the type of ink that is used is a type that the body cannot break down on its own, which is why they tend to be permanent, which is a problem when you try to remove it because the usual methods of having the body remove it on its own do not exist. So how do you get rid of it without leaving a scar? The lasers work by emitting a very discrete wavelength of light that is absorbed by certain colors and not by other colors.

So the best example in dermatology is the laser that actually I do have, which treats red color. So basically blood vessels, red lesions, people get like little blood vessels on their nose or their cheeks. I have a laser that emits a wavelength of 532 nanometers, which is absorbed by red, by the red light in the visible light spectrum. So anything that's red absorbs this laser and is heated up and is sort of cauterized shut. And anything that's not red, it just passes through it. And that's how you can wipe out these blood vessels without actually burning the skin and causing scars. So if he had gotten 29 DRS in red text, you would be better equipped?

Well, actually, the problem with tattoos is the particles themselves are, I think, I'm trying to remember now, this is like my board review from like 15 years ago. So either too big or too small. Like the wavelengths do not typically work on the tattoo ink because the particles are like not the right size. So in the old days, you would do it by brute force and you'd have to laser somebody 10 or 12 times

every month they would come in. And certain colors, we had laser wavelengths that worked really well for. Certain colors, we did not. Red was not typically one that was easy to get rid of, but green, I think, was the one that was really a nightmare. But the good news is there is a newer technology now, what is called picosecond technology. So a nanosecond is a billionth of a second. All right, a picosecond is a trillionth of a second. And one of the other parameters of the laser is sort of the speed of absorption in the skin. And a picosecond laser, literally, the wavelength travels through in the span of time measured in trillions of a second, which is enough. It's so fast that it basically doesn't burn the skin tissue, but is able to, almost like a shockwave, break up the pigment particles.

I'm simplifying and probably mischaracterizing that a little bit. But the idea basically is that so much energy is delivered in such a short amount of time that it breaks the pigment up into particles small enough for the body to digest it, but it happens so fast that the skin doesn't heat up to the point of causing blisters and scars.

I see. And so regardless of the color, this technology seems to be working a lot better. It still takes six to eight treatments to get rid of, and you're probably never going to get rid of 100% of the color. But you could probably get rid of 80% to 90% of the tattoo over a period of six to eight months going in once a month for treatment. You know, something like this is probably going to run you a couple hundred dollars of treatment. So you're looking at a couple thousand dollars of regret to get rid of this. Maybe Chapman's defensive season was worth a couple thousand dollars.

Chris Davis, you know, one in a million chance of hitting.247 four straight years. So maybe that's worth it to somebody. Wouldn't be worth it to me. But I'm glad to know that when he sobers up, at least he will realize he does have an alternative. Yeah, there are options out there. Just in case if anyone who also appeared on this podcast is ever interested in pursuing them, not saying that he will or that he should, but just in case he does. All right. So that's good to know.

So you have written about Greayscale on Game of Thrones. You've written about Eczema on The Night Of. And now you have consulted on tattoo removal of Oakland A's related baseball stats. It's the dermatology pop culture sports trifecta. There's no better place to work than the ringer for stuff like that, as you know. All right. So what we had originally planned to talk about is Stratomatic, and this is something you have a lot of experience in going back decades, not quite as many decades as our guests earlier in this episode, but close. And you have written about this subject at Baseball Perspectives.

I will link to that article if people are interested in reading your thoughts at length. But tell me a little bit about how you got into it, how it played a part in the origin story of you and Joe Sheehan and Baseball Perspectives, and generally just what you have learned from Strat. Because Jeff and I not experienced Strat players, but we kind of understand how it can help you to come to some of the epiphanies that we have in other ways about baseball and analysis and sabermetrics. Yeah. I mean, it's not an exaggeration to say that. Without Stratamedic, I would not be where I am today. On this podcast, talking about removing touches. Well, on this podcast, or had the career that I've had. On this podcast. Well, on this podcast, I've had the career that I've had. Yeah, exactly. Thank God for Stratomatic. I would never be able to talk about the picosecond laser

with you, Ben. I went to college in 1991. And I had been living for a time overseas and had been as far removed from sort of my baseball fix as possible. So I graduated high school and came back to America for college. I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. And this was the last season of Memorial Stadium before they opened Camden Yards. I remember I was moved into my dorm late August. So there was one month left in the season. And I'd never been to a major league ballpark until a month before I went off to college. When we were

in Kansas city, I was able to go to a game there. And suddenly I was living six blocks away from like Memorial stadium. And I was like, you know, playing hooky from class just to go to every ball game I could. And walking around campus between classes, the first couple weeks of school, I saw a flyer for a simulation baseball league. And I'd never – the other thing is I'd been living overseas. I'd never played fantasy baseball. I'd never played rotisserie as it was still probably mostly known back then. I knew about it. I thought the idea was amazing.

I really wanted to play in a league. I had a competitive Jones. And so I saw this and thought, great, I'll show up and find out what it was about. Walked in and there were a bunch of veterans in the room and a bunch of freshmen who never played and saw my first Stratomatic cards. And it was basically like, yeah, this is the game. We're going to draft players and we're going to play out a league. It was based on the 1990 season. I want to say, I believe Ricky Henderson was the first pick and Barry Bonds was second. It was one or the other.

Barry Bonds was like the first pick like 15 years out of the first one I played Strat. And I remember my very first pick going in pole. I'm thinking, well, a bullpen is important. And that was Dennis Eckersley's ridiculous season with a 0.61 ERA or whatever. So I drafted Dennis Eckersley with my first pick. I had no idea what I was doing, but put together a team and immediately started playing.

We played our first game right after the draft. I still remember the first game I ever played, Chuck Finley threw a shutout for me. I won 2-0, and I was hooked. And we played basically throughout college. I made some very close friendships with some freshmen who were with me who were also kind of new at the game. And other people were partying on Friday nights. And on Fridays, we would play from 4 to, like, midnight

in one of the classrooms that we had booked. And you would just hear the sound of dice being rolled and people cursing when they got the rolls they didn't want, and dice being thrown when they missed a home run in the late innings. I mean, it was just a part of my life throughout college. And from there, after playing that for a few months and realizing how much I enjoyed it, the next step up was to form an actual, what they used to call a play-by-mail league. And I know you talked with the people from the league that was face-to-face, but a play-by-mail league was sort of the other way of playing, which was literally people potentially around the country who would play home games in the comfort of their homes using instructions sent to them by their opponents. And it was a way to set up a league where you could play 162 game full seasons, not just a 56 game season or whatever you

might play face to face. And the computer version of Stratomatic had been developed at that point, so you could actually like program the manager yourself and sort of set up your rotation and your lineups and how aggressive you wanted to be about pinch hitting and pinch running, et cetera. So I recruited some of the guys in the league with me to join the league. This was late in my freshman year. So this was 1992 and started the league the first year. And by, you know, half the people dropped out before the season was over. So we were kind of desperately looking for new people. So I went online into the news forums. This is back in the heyday of rec sport baseball, which you've heard of.

I know that's where Sherry Nichols, I know you interviewed her. That's where people like that lurked. And I kind of just put up an ad and said, you know, looking for people to join the Stratomatic League. And one of the people who answered was a guy named Joe Sheehan, who I'd seen his stuff. He had posted on the bulletin board a few times. And he had history playing Stratomatic.

He grew up playing it in New York. And we started emailing back and forth. And we got along right away. And we both – it wasn't just Strat for us. We both loved the game of baseball itself. And had read Bill James and new analytics. And I guess we didn't call it analytics and it was still Saper Metrics. And pretty soon we were talking on the phone and, you know, he and I have been arguing

with each other ever since, basically. So from that perspective, I mean, then from there, obviously a couple of years later, Joe and I had met up with Gary Huckabee and Christina Carl and Clay Davenport to start Baseball Perspectives. But even before that, three years before BP, Joe and I were playing Strat online. And then he kind of convinced me to take a train to Atlantic City, sight unseen, to meet him and play in the Stratomatic Tournament. That's where you saw the real hardcore players and that's where i realized just how little i knew about the game and got schooled a lot until i until i sort of you know understood the nuances of the game better yeah and i know you had read bill james and been exposed to those ideas but how did strat sort of cement your understanding of those concepts see yeah i mean

i can't say i learned sabermer metrics through Strat, but it definitely reinforced it. I mean, I think the most obvious way in which that was the case was the fact that when you play the game, you have cards, right? You have cards for the batter, cards for the pitcher. You roll the dice, you look at the card, you see what the result is based on the roll. And the thing is, any result which ends up with the batter reaching base is in all capital letters in bold print. And any result that results in and out would be in lowercase letters, not in bold. Just visually, it was so clear that the biggest dichotomy in the batter-pitcher matchup is simply getting on base versus not getting on base.

I mean, I already knew the importance of on-base percentage from reading Bill James. But to see that, anybody who plays strat and doesn't understand that a walk is ultimately a victory for the hitter is not paying attention. I mean, that is drummed into you so clearly. A walk is a victory for the hitter, you know, is not paying attention. I mean, that is drummed into you so clearly. A walk is a victory for the hitter. And the idea that somehow walks are not an important part of an offense would be ridiculous to anybody playing Stratomatic. And I mean, that's obvious today, but back in the 1990s, let's be frank, that was still considered kind of ridiculous talk, even among like, you among seasoned baseball writers, and half the teams in baseball didn't appreciate that. So I think that was the most obvious thing.

But I think the importance of platoon matchups was huge because it's a lot easier to bring in a left-handed reliever for a batter in a game like Stratomatic than you don't have to worry about like warming them up and you don't have to worry about the players as human beings. It's just, you know, you're literally using this stat generating robots. So you can be a lot more aggressive with strategy. And it's very interesting. Joe and I have actually discussed this recently, this year, that in the post-season in Major League Baseball in 2018, it's like this year, finally, we're actually seeing teams' managers manage the way he and I were managing Stratomatic games against each other in like 1993. You know, using the opener strategy, we actually had laws passed to ban opener strategies. You know, the starting pitcher had to go a minimum number of innings because every single game

you would have a guy face one batter and then you would bring in a guy who throws from the other side to get all the platoon matchups in your favor. But the aggressiveness of using your bullpen, I mean, in tournaments especially where you're not really worrying about

building a team for the long term, you don't have a farm. So you just, the cards are the cards. You're playing games to win right now. We would have seven, eight, nine man bullpens, you know, back in the early to mid nineties in order to try and get those matchups. So you bring in the lefty for one batter. You would bring in the lefty in the fifth inning

because you were trying to pull that, trying to force your opponent to take out his, you know, his left-handed hitting star who's, you know, can't hit left-handers. And then know that by the eighth inning, you'll have throw,

you know, you'll have your right-hander who gets right-handers out and he'll be locked in with who's ever at the plate. I mean, it was almost what Alex Cora was doing to Dave Roberts from the world series and taking advantage of, of the Dod Dodgers' propensity to platoon. If you get guys, if you get managers to commit too early, then they're going to be locked in later in the game

and you have the advantage. So much of baseball strategy I learned through just playing Stratomatic over and over and over again. And the other thing is you learn the players so much better. I mean, before I started playing, I probably knew Ken Griffey was left-handed, but I don't think I would have known, I don't know, if John Tudor was a left-hander or a right-hander. I mean, there was a lot of aspects of players' abilities that I wasn't aware. I mean, when you play Stratomatic, you figure out not just who are the good base stealers, but a guy

might have, might not steal bases, but have a very high base running rating. So if he's going first to third or second to home, he's going to be successful more often than a slower runner. So you learn the players a lot better. And then, of course, the other thing I think that you really appreciate is the ballpark effect. That was the other thing. What we call diamonds.

So many home runs in the game are what are called diamonds, which are basically a potential home run and the probability depends on the ballpark you're playing in. So if you're playing in San Francisco or Kansas City and you roll a diamond, it's a home run. You then roll a 20-sided die

to see if it's a home run, but it's going to be a home run if you roll a one or a two, you know, 10% chance. You play in Yankee Stadium and it's one to 16, you know if you roll a 1 or a 2, you know, 10% chance. You're playing Yankee Stadium, and it's 1 to 16. You know, you've got an 80% chance. And the impact that has on a player's performance is huge.

But what it also means is that two guys who might have both hit 25 home runs in the same season, and one happened to have played his season in San Francisco versus Yankee Stadium, the cards are going to be radically different. And again, this is stuff that anybody listening to this right now is like, duh. But 25 years ago, this was like heavy stuff. And we knew what ballpark effects were. But I remember when I started playing the game, I was convinced that Stratomatic was overdoing the ballpark effects. I mean, again, I knew from reading Bill James that Fenway Park was a great place for batting average and Wrigley Field was a great place for offense when the wind was blowing out. But I still thought that there was too much emphasis placed on ballpark effect. And after playing for a few years and after starting to write about baseball and read what other people were researching about baseball, I realized, no, they, you know, the game actually pretty realistically, you know, accounts for ballpark effects and it really is a big part

of the game. And I think to this day, I think people still don't appreciate just how much ballparks affect performance. All right. Well, I'm going to link to your story, but I know that you wanted to close with a story that comes from the story. Yeah. So I, so I, this. So this article you're linking to, I wrote, it was basically my 10th anniversary of playing Stratomatic. And I wrote this article about the lessons I learned from playing Stratomatic. This is 2001, this article was written for Baseball Prospectus. But the reality is the main reason I wrote this article was that the Stratomatic League that I had formed 10 years earlier was still going strong. In fact, it's still going today, although I finally retired after 25 years. But we had lost

a number of managers and was having trouble filling those slots. So I asked Joe, who was then managing the Baseball Perspectives website, hey, do you mind if I write an article about Stratomatic? And at the end, just append a little note saying that we are looking for managers for our league. And if you read the article, you can see that at the very bottom, we're looking for some expansion managers. And that was the real impetus for me writing it. We got over 100 responses. And I sent out questionnaires to everybody who responded, just trying to weed out people who weren't really serious. A lot of people were still serious, and there was probably like 25 people who were legitimately interested.

And I think the two people, I needed three owners, I think, and two of them were pretty clear. Two people had a lot of experience playing the game. They'd played the computer version. I didn't have to worry about them flaking on us. And I couldn't come up with a third person. And there were a couple of candidates. And I kept coming back to this one candidate who had played Stratomatic as a kid, but hadn't played

in a long time, which should have ruled him out. But he was a reporter, actually. I think an investor in his business daily. He was a writer. Seemed like a smart guy. But I swear to God, this is true. What I kept coming back to was, he was a Montreal Expos fan. And I'm just like, I've never met a Montreal Expos fan. I didn't know they existed. So I kind of grilled this person by email a little bit more, and he seemed very, very interested

and knew the game pretty well. You get people who want to join a league, and then you ask them, like, who's the best shortstop in the National League, And they couldn't name three people. And so he knew what he was talking about. And so ultimately I said, you know what, let's take a chance on this guy and invite him to join the league. And that's how Joni Carey became a part of Baseball Perspectives. So from there, Joni Carey joined our Stratabatic League. A couple of months later, asked me and Joe if he could write something for Baseball Perspectives. And we're like, well, let's see what you've got.

He wrote something. I think it was his first article. I think it was on the success cycle, which was something that was, I don't want to say groundbreaking, but it framed things in a new way and I think got a lot of attention. And pretty soon he was writing regularly for us and writing books and now he's conquered the world. I'll never forgive myself for inflicting him on

the baseball public. Jonah is very gracious. He will tell that story himself. He will tell the story that he owes his career to that random moment where I looked at a guy who wanted to join a Strat League. And if he had not been a Montreal Expos fan, I don't think I would have picked him.

Yeah. He was not a Montreal Expos fan. He was the Montreal Expos fan. He was the Montreal Expos fan. I didn't know that then. I know that now. All right. Well, thank you for coming on. And if you're in the Chicago area, anyone listening and you need your skin checked out, you can go to Clear Skin Dermatology and look up Rani. And he will not remove your tattoos, but he can talk to you about picoseconds and lasers. And I offer free baseball talk while I do the examination too. Yes, right. All right right, Randy, thank you very much for coming on. Of course, Ben, anytime. All right, that will do it for today.

Thanks for listening, and thanks to everyone who joined us. Thank you to Effectively Wild listener Rachel Pollinger, whose parents we spoke to earlier on this episode, for letting us know about them and about the Sambilla, which has been part of her parents' lives for longer than she has. And I would remind everyone that Effectively Wild listener John Ackerman made a t-shirt of the 247s. So if you want to wear it on your body without having it be part of your body, you can go to the247shirt.com to find it. I have two quick things to add.

The first, if you haven't read Roger Angel's new article on Monday, I recommend that you do. I was a little worried about Roger, who, as many of you know, is my baseball writing idol and writing idol period, certainly one of them, and he also occupies that role for many people I know. He hadn't written since May, and I was hoping that he would be back for the postseason. Usually he blogs about the playoffs, at least when New York teams are involved, and he didn't this year, and he's 98 years old.

And I was somewhat concerned, and even more so, when I saw on Monday Roger Angel trending on Twitter. But I should have known he was trending because he wrote something great. 98 or not. This was not about baseball. It was about voting. And Roger Angel knows a thing or two about that as well, as someone who first voted for presidential election when FDR was running.

Anyway, I was very heartened to see a new piece from Roger. I also liked the message of the piece. I'm sure that your decision about whether to vote or not, if you're even hearing this before election day, is not predicated on whether a baseball podcaster you listen to is voting or not, but I will be. And if there's something you feel strongly about, I hope you'll join me and Roger Angel and many millions of others in doing that too. In equally important news, I have a correction to our minor league draft episode from last week. When we were talking to Sam Miller about his Wade LeBlanc draft pick and how he blew all of us away, it was stated that Sam would have beaten us even without the Wade LeBlanc pick. Well, as it turns out, there's been a recount. There was a player missing from my total, Kurt Casale, the Rays catcher, one of my draftees.

He got 156 plate appearances in 2018, and he was not on my list. So if you add Kurt Casale to my total, I am now within the margin of Wade LeBlanc of Sam's lead. What that means, I don't know. Sam won fair and square. He beat us by a lot. But it was just that one pick. I'm just saying. We had the same number of guys make the majors.

Wade LeBlanc is a unicorn. So you can support this podcast and support continued minor league drafting on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already done so. Paul Locton, Michael Webb, Brian Hayworth, Jake Silverman, and Matt Gillette. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a

supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance. And we will be back a little later this week. It's the red moon when it's full All these psychics and these doctors They're all right and they're all wrong It's like trying to make out every word When they should simply hum along It's not some message written in the dark Or some truth that no one's seen

It's a little bit of everything all right all right thank you that was fun yeah that was very fun thank you very much and uh you you don't know i mean you you made my weekend you don't you don't know that but i don't laugh like that very often that That's good. It hurt so bad. It hurt so bad. And it was starting to bleed. And what the guy actually said, he's like, look, man, I don't fucking care at all. And I'm like, okay, all right, we're done here.