Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1339: Jeff Got a Job

Episode Date: February 22, 2019

In Jeff Sullivan’s final episode as the co-host of Effectively Wild (but not the podcast’s final episode), he and Ben Lindbergh discuss his new job as an analyst for the Tampa Bay Rays, what it was like to be courted by teams, why he decided to depart FanGraphs and why he feels guilty about it, […]

I'm leaving, don't interpret it wrong Don't worry, I'm not leaving for long Put you in a carrier and take you to the shows What you think is not work is work Hello and welcome to episode 1339 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast with Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello, Jeff. Hello. No banter today. You have probably all read this podcast's title or seen the episode summary or come across the news somewhere else, so you know why we're here. Jeff, I believe you have, as they say on twitter some personal news yeah i don't even i didn't i didn't prepare any statements i'm leaving

i'm leaving i'm leaving the podcast i'm leaving ben i'm leaving fangraphs and i am joining the tampa bay race where i will have a job with them i will be leaving my current job and taking that job. And I feel very, very guilty in my heart when I told Fangraphs the first time. I felt very guilty when I told you. I know you have been clued in throughout this entire process, and it's gone in a few different directions. But I feel all of that guilt very powerfully right now, like right now, which I didn't expect. As you imagine thousands of people listening and weeping silently as they commute to work and realize that they will never hear your voice in their earphones again. Well, I guess this isn't your or this podcast's first time going through a similar sort of

situation, right? So at least in that sense, maybe people have some experience? Yeah. So before we proceed, and we will get into all of this, but I'll just address the future very briefly so that people can keep listening without worrying or mourning too much. The podcast will continue on the same schedule. We will have a new co-host, and it's someone you know and love and have heard on the show who can continue to provide the high level of analysis and knowledge and weirdness and whimsy that we are accustomed to because we wouldn't want to do Effectively Wild any other way or compromise its quality. So we will be making that announcement soon. But today we are here to talk about Jeff and with Jeff while we still can. to talk about Jeff and with Jeff while we still can.

So it is very strange to have this conversation with you because I've had this kind of conversation with many guests on many episodes over the past several years, and sometimes we have had that kind of conversation together with someone else. But now for the first time, I am having it with a co-host who is actually going to a baseball team. So given that you can probably only say so much and all jobs turn out to be different than you think they will before they start,

what will you be doing for the Tampa Bay Rays? So the job title is analyst, baseball development. It is an analyst position in the baseball development department where I will be conducting analysis and evaluating baseball development for for a team that as far as I can tell from the outside really doesn't need any help the Rays seem to have most of it figured out on its own but the gist is this isn't this isn't something

I went into like having prepared a resume I didn't prepare a resume to go to the Rays I didn't prepare a resume to go to Fangraphs I just met David Appelman drunk in a bar and I asked, can I work for Fangraphs? And he said, you can work for Fangraphs. So that's how that happened. But I guess as much as I should probably say or can say is that I am known to have produced a body of work in the public and the Rays must feel more than even I feel that that skill set that has led to my produced body of work must be of some value to them. So I don't know what their internal models are that evaluate public analysts, but I guess this one is biased and in at least my favor, and I'm not going to turn them down. Yeah. Now by baseball development,

is that what the Rays call baseball operations, or is that player development specifically? There are different subdivisions, I guess. I'm still getting a hang of the entire organizational structure. It is a very large front office food. To whatever extent anyone is going to be critical of the Rays for not spending enough on their major league roster. They have spent a lot of money in other areas. And this is just another, I think we can instantly refer to it as a sunk cost position that they are giving to me. But if you look at their front office, MLB.com link should shed a decent amount of information, but it should be a position where it is broad in scope. Yeah. Well, when we've talked to some people who've taken team jobs, sometimes it's the

fulfillment of a lifelong dream. And this is why they got into baseball writing and analysis. And this is what they've been working toward. And with other people, it's no, this just kind of came along and I wasn't really expecting it. And I just jumped at this opportunity. Which one are you closer to? I mean, in a sense, you could say both. It's 10 years, I don't know, almost a day, almost a month that I interviewed for some sort of analytical internship position with the Mariners that I was very excited about and ultimately did not get, which in the long run is probably for the best because I'm pretty sure that position was unpaid. But there I mean, that was around the same time that, you know, you you worked for the Yankees. We were of similar age. We are still of similar age. And there that that will never deviate.

And there there was a point in my life when all I wanted to do was work for a baseball team. And then I became more and more dedicated to the public analysis and writing. And I had heard what it was like to work for a team. And I thought, no, actually, that doesn't sound like it's for me. And you and I have talked several times over the years about how it didn't seem like that was the life for either one of us. So this isn't something that i had sought out but this is something that i didn't know could become available uh the rays have been very understanding with the lifestyle that i would like to continue to to live and so this is i mean if i could just i'll boil this all down in very simple and probably overused terms. The Rays presented me with something that I couldn't in good conscience turn down for reasons I guess I'm sure you and I are going to get into.

But there's, you know, there's a lot of toys on the other end that you and I have always been curious about, not just with the Rays, but with any team. I mean, you know, the Rays, of course, to a further extent. But there's a lot of information in there, especially now. And I feel like if I could anticipate my future regrets if i didn't do this i feel like i would pretty strongly regret not getting a peek behind the curtain well we learned only recently that this day would definitely be coming but it's been clear for a while that it could be coming and you've kind of kept me apprised of each twist of the knife as it became more likely.

And you were talking to teams for about as long as Manny Machado was before this thing was finally decided. You have been much in demand this winter. The Rays were not the only team that expressed interest in your services, and I have at times felt like your PR person because multiple teams have contacted me to ask for your contact info because clearly the only service that teams are interested in obtaining from me is your email address. No hard feelings, people. That's fine. I understand. But why do you think it is that – and it's not totally suddenly.

As you mentioned, you interviewed for an internship once. I think you mentioned to me once that you had interviewed for another position at some point along the way. But this winter, it just seemed to really ramp up where a bunch of teams wanted you all at once. And it makes sense to me that they would want you. But on the other hand, you have been doing this baseball blogging thing for 15 years now.

You are not entirely a new person. So what is it that has changed you think that has brought your skill set more into demand? Luck? I think it might be luck. I think it's luck that allowed me to get a part-time job blogging. It's luck that allowed me to get a full-time job blogging. And I think it's luck that led me to these circumstances. It could have been any number of people could have been approached. I don't know. I don't know why me. I don't know why now. But I mean, as you mentioned, this process has been going on for a while for a variety of reasons. It just kind of dragged on. You know, there's a lot that teams are trying to do. There's a lot of hiring that teams are trying to do and i think this offseason more than ever i don't have numbers for this but it felt like there

was substantial turnover between different front offices to say nothing of front offices just continuing to to staff up with all these spending restrictions on on the on-field product teams are still spending money where they can and then one of those areas where they're spending is in off the field tech and personnel. So I don't know what it was that led to, God, I don't want to say sweepstakes. That feels very self-important, but I think it was at some point someone was just having a conversation with somebody else and thought, eh, maybe this would be a good idea. Let's give it a shot. And this winter, more than any previous winter, I happened to be open to the possibility. So it took a lot of conversation, a lot of securing certain details so that this is going to be a leap. And even though I've been doing

baseball analysis for, God, a decade and a half, I have no clear idea what my next workday is going to look like. And I know that's to a certain extent true as a writer because you never know what the next news is going to be. But like you kind of know what your day is going to look like regardless. And now I am terrified. Yeah. Well, I mean there is a certain pressure that comes to writing and being a public person and having to produce content, but it's a pressure that you are very it's an unknown pressure and there are different things at stake. So you don't have to deal with people tweeting at you or commenting on your articles and saying mean things. But on the other hand, there are actual like million dollar decisions

that maybe you could be playing some part in. So that is scary in a different way. in a different way? I have recognized for months that this is by necessity a sacrifice of the public persona, I guess, whatever it is that I've accidentally cultivated for the past several years. And I think there's no question that having a job like this is good for the ego, at least provided you're okay at it and you don't repeatedly get, I don't know, fired or dismissed. There's a lot of bad, but there's more good that that outweighs it and i don't know what it's going to be like to to lose that part a big part of me is actually kind of looking forward to being like a like a person in in the shadows in the corner who's just like not calling attention to himself just trying to do some work i think it'll'll be a relief. But at the same time, there is

without question, the two outlets, both writing and podcasting and losing that, I guess I'm going to gain a more collaborative atmosphere with with the people I'm going to work with. But I don't know what it's going to do to my ego. And I guess there's, we're, we're all going to find out together. I can't, there's, there's not a lot of information I can share with you, Ben, after this becomes official and once I go behind the wall, so to speak. But I can at least tell you how my ego is just gradually deteriorating over the course of weeks and months. on a day-to-day basis, you're still going to be working remotely. You'll still be in Portland. You'll still presumably be enjoying the outdoors whenever you can. So it won't be like you're moving to Tampa Bay and having a completely different lifestyle. Seems more likely that the Rays will move to Portland than that you will move to the Rays, but it will still be different from day-to-day. But I wanted to ask, as you mentioned, the allure of getting to

peek behind the curtain and see some cool stats that we don't have access to. And you have said that your conception of heaven is a place where you can just get immediate answers to any question you want,

which I agree would be very fun for a while, but then ultimately might be closer to hell than heaven because what do you actually do when you can get every answer immediately and there's no need to be curious about anything? That seems like it might backfire in the long run, but you're getting the baseball version of that, or at least as close as anyone can come to that.

Do you have any idea what the first search you will do? Is there some question that you are wondering that if the second you get the keys to whatever database you will have access to you'll just have to satisfy your curiosity about something i think what i'll i mean probably what i'll want to do is if assuming i think every team that does any sort of analysis perfunctory analysis even just has their own internal twins above replacement measure or something like that and i will want to find theirs and i will want to – maybe it's going over the past five years or maybe going by season by season

and looking for just the biggest differences between theirs and, like, what's at VanGraphs. Sounds like a good post. Well, I wonder. I should say VanGraphs is announcing a new hire on Monday who's going to be writing under uh the name coming out of nowhere yeah just publishing a lot of tampa bay specific i am so overwhelmed by the prospect of the information that i could have access to that i can't wait to see what i have been horribly wrong about for so many years because i've I've asked the question when I was in

Tampa Bay, when I've talked to them throughout the process, I've raised the question a few times, like, so I understand why you're talking to me, but also, what have I really screwed up in the past several years according to your evaluation? And two, I mean, they've kind of been around the bush or been a little tight-lipped about it because until I officially accepted their offer, I was still a writer. And there's only so much you want to share with someone who's a member of the media, for God's sake. But I'm really looking forward to – at some point, I'm certain I'm going to be flying down to have a visit of several days or maybe a couple weeks in spring training. And all I want to do – it's going to be a a real like kids first day at a new school kind of experience. And I'm going to go in, hope that I'm not dressed too funny. And I'm just going to sit there and I'm going to want

to listen to information from everybody. And I want to pay extra attention to whoever is the first person who comes up and says, wow, you got this one thing completely wrong. And here's why I can't wait. I can't wait to hopefully have dozens of conversations with different people in the organization who pick on different articles I've written that say this was stupid and here's why I think it was. Yeah. Well, I was wondering about that because in our little corner of the internet, you are one of the most respected figures and accomplished figures, just sabermetric writing. Your name carries a credibility with it. And obviously the Rays feel that way too, or they wouldn't have wanted you.

But do you feel like you are entering this job with, I don't know, just like any kind of accrued credibility that will help you feel like you are deserving of your spot and you deserve to be there as much as anyone else and you feel comfortable because you have this record of posts or do you feel like well i've got to prove myself again now yeah absolutely no credibility starting completely over and i think i mean that's i think that's necessary you can't you don't want to go into a position like this with with a giant inflated ego but like like I am, I don't know. Like in my first day at Fangraphs, I wrote two posts. I think one was about the Angels or something.

Forgettable posts. Yes, I went back and read it today. Oh, no. Angels, I think it was batting average on balls in play or something. I don't know. And there was another post in there too. That was a weird time to be writing. But I don't know how long it's going to take to feel comfortable and to feel like I know what I'm doing.

And even now, I think half the time at Fangraphs, I feel like I'm faking it or just kind of searching for topics in desperation. But again, my perception of the Rays from the outside, no, they don't have a very high budget. But I feel like they do things in the best way or close to the best way, almost across the board. Whatever I don't know about their organization, I just kind of have in my head, if you work for the Rays, you've been selected for the capacity and the ability to work for the Rays, one of the most brilliant organizations in Major League Baseball. And I would have said that before they hired me as well, so this isn't just me blowing smoke up their asses.

And, yeah, I have a bunch of blog posts to my name based on baseball reference queries and some baseball savant searches and and stuff but no I'm just gonna go in there and it's gonna take a long time before I feel like I am doing anything that helps anybody yeah well you're not the first internet person obviously to work for the Rays they've been kind of a common hirer, maybe not the most frequent hirer, but certainly a serial hirer of internet people. So you don't have to prove that internet people have something to contribute as you might have a decade light on the process to the extent that you can. Not that many people listening to this will ever have the experience of multiple teams coming to them and saying, hey, want to work for us? But if they can live a little vicariously through you, can you tell us what it is like to interview with a team or teams? I mean, how long are you meeting with people?

Whom are you meeting with? What kind of questions are asked? Is it like you're just kind of coming in and showing that you can speak and look people in the eye and not be terribly awkward? Or is it more about demonstrating your abilities in some more concrete way? I didn't, there weren't any tests, or at least I don't think there were any tests. There weren't any tests that were graded before me and scored, and then I was given a percentage. Yeah. This will, I guess I should say, every interview process is going to be different depending on whatever job it is that you're pursuing. And with certain jobs, you might only interview with a very, very small number of people, maybe in a very tight-knit group.

With the interviews that I did, they were in person, which I think only makes sense. You can't hire someone without actually having met them, or at least you shouldn't. And I interviewed with several people across a number of different groups. And I think it was mostly just kind of, hey, here's who works here. Here are people you might potentially be interacting with, or maybe these are just people who you could have good baseball conversations with. And so if I could, to put it really simply, the interviews were pretty draining because it's a lot of talking, but they really felt like a series of just baseball conversations with different people, sometimes repeating yourself

and sometimes not. But it's just you, at least in my own experience, I would go in and there were certain questions about my background or why this team or how do you think I might be able to help? But probably 80% to 90% of it was just talking about baseball, talking about analysis, talking about the team in question, talking about things maybe the team could do better, previous transactions the team has made. And so in that sense, it felt fun. It was like hanging out at, I guess, a really highly educated baseball bar with no alcohol. No, this doesn't work. Yeah, just a draining series of conversations about baseball. Like, imagine you've done a lot of podcasts in the past, right?

Just imagine that you were doing like, I don't know, 10 consecutive podcasts all about baseball. Yeah, right. But you didn't feel like you were put on the spot, I suppose. You weren't like quizzed. You didn't get that feeling that you were being evaluated, even though you probably were being evaluated. Yeah, I'm sure it would have been a waste of everyone's time if I weren't being evaluated. And I have no idea what the conversations were that might have taken place behind closed doors after I departed. But I guess in just talking about baseball, whoever is talking to you, whoever the people are who are talking to you can get a sense of how you think about the

game. Again, for anyone who is familiar with my body of work, it works to my benefit. In this case, I guess that pretty much everything that I think about baseball is out there in the public sphere. You and I both know if you're sitting on ideas, you better write about them because it's the most precious resource from this position. So I never really felt like I had to prove myself. Although, you know, every so often there would be a question that would come up that was a bit of a stumper. I remember there was a question like, oh, what's the last analytical? oh, what's the last analytical – this was not from the Rays, but there was a question of what was the last analytical baseball article you read that changed your mind about something?

And I wasn't prepared for that one, so I kind of stammered my way through an answer before I think I kind of got my feet on the ground. So in that sense, that still stands out as vivid because I don't think I handled that question very well, but everything else was relatively easy. Not as intimidating as maybe you'd expect a classic job interview to be, but again, I don't know. I haven't done a whole lot of job interviews. What did you ultimately say as your answer to that question? I don't know if I ever came up with one. I think I might have been able to sort of loosely say,

it was real presidential debate technique to just kind of segue into the talking point that you felt more comfortable going to. So I think within 30 or 45 seconds, I was able to get talking about Patrick Corbin. And that felt like more my wheelhouse. You mentioned to me that with at least one of the teams that you interviewed with, many of the members of the front office you were talking to are listeners of this podcast. So hello, people who either are Jeff's current colleagues or interviewed Jeff this winter, which is kind of a weird thing because I don't know whether it means that they enjoyed and were so impressed by your podcasting that they just wanted exclusive access to your insights and conversation,

even though it comes at the cost of actually having you on a podcast and enjoying you in that way. It's somewhat selfish that thousands of people got to enjoy Jeff Sullivan, and now a much smaller group of people will get to enjoy Jeff Sullivan, and now a much smaller group of people will get to enjoy Jeff Sullivan. And, I mean, they would only get the edited version of Jeff Sullivan, and the unedited version of Jeff Sullivan can have a difficult time making friends, Ben. So, you know, but every so often, don't you ever get, do you ever get podcast, like, decision fatigue? And I feel like maybe there's value in just hiring away a bunch of co-hosts to just end a podcast so you don't have to like worry about trying to fit them all in

i would do that eight times a week i would just like oh i'm i'm sorry i'm behind on i don't know this true crime podcast i'm going to hire away one of the co-hosts so that it just ceases to exist and that way they're not adding to the back catalog yeah no one wanted to hire us as a package deal so that we could just continue to produce this podcast for one team and one baseball operations department exclusively give them access to all the competitive advantages that come from our stat blasts and endless williams sddo discussions just think we could have we could have done a stat blast using private internal metrics to come up with the most illuminating i did i did broach the idea but it seemed to be a non-starter

i would still use the song even though only like gms would be listening to it oh man well i mean this is uh gonna be quite a change I guess, for you just in the type of work that you are producing. I'm sure you'll still be using your writing and communication skills. That is still something of value that you're bringing to a team, even if you're not doing it in blog post form. Do you think that you will miss the writing itself or was the writing just kind of a means to an end for you? Or has there been burnout and you're kind of happy that you get to lay down your keyboard at least to some extent very very honestly i i have felt this sort i don't know if it's seasonal or or cyclical or what but i've felt this sort of

sense of inner dread of approaching or having plateaued anyway in the public sphere. And I love spending my time just playing with these little analytical tools and trying to analyze players and trades. And it feels like whatever is the brewing genre of baseball writing on the internet, it feels like it's turning into a different sort of conversation. And I wasn't really sure how to picture a medium and long-term future out here anyway, which is not to say that this is the official end, because as you know how these things work when you work for a team,

it's not a forever deal. You sign a contract. And I would say extremely probable that in a medium amount of time, the Rays will decide whoops let's just nip this one in the bud and and then I'll have to come crawling back for another another kind of job in which case I'll evaluate at that point whether or not you were looking for a co-host yeah but I do I think that for a variety of reasons these offers were were presented to me at a at an open-minded time because i have felt worse about my own writing skill for for a while the sort of creative fun writing that used

to come more naturally as i feel like it used to come more naturally as i don't know it feels like that skill has waned and deteriorated so i don't know if that's true and i don't know if this means that for writing purposes rays are hiring a a declining asset, but you know, that would be a critique of their evaluative skills, not mine for taking a job. Yeah, you don't do as many fake dialogues these days. That was more like 2012 era, Jeff Sullivan, the baseball nation days. Do you remember what old school baseball blocking used to be like? It was a lot easier and a lot more, I don't know, just a lot more humorous. Yeah, I think that's true. I don't know.

I mean, you brought that to it. Not everyone can, but it is getting more difficult, I think. I mean, A, teams are hiring everyone who is good at baseball analysis. So it's getting harder to find that type of stuff. I think even though new people are constantly coming along who can do amazing things, as soon as they do those amazing things, they're gone and teams hire them. It's not entirely in the public sphere. It's sort of in a form it is, but we out here in the internet can't really slice and dice the stats the way that we could with PitchFX, for instance. It's kind of roped off to a certain degree.

And I don't know, maybe it's just a little bit of lack of newness. As you said, it can be kind of hard to think of the last analytical piece that totally changed your mind about baseball. I think we all went through that with catcher framing, for instance, and with many things in the earlier pitch FX era. But those kinds of amazing insights are getting fewer and further between. Maybe you're about to have some on your first day working for the Rays, but in the public sphere at least. for the race, but in the public sphere, at least. And I keep feeling like I'm learning a lot about baseball constantly, certainly working on the book and all the new player development stuff that's going on. A lot of that is new and exciting, but it does feel like it's harder and harder to

say something different that no one has said before, which is maybe just a product of the fact that this is all sort of established now and we've all been doing this for a while and we're not the outsiders who are providing a unique perspective. Everyone is kind of looking at baseball in this way these days. What did sort of, I guess, frighten me thinking about remaining in the public, of course, everything at Fangraphs is stable. Fangraphs is a wonderful company and the job is never going to go anywhere. But just thinking about the genre of job, the baseball analyst down the road, this might be a far-fetched theory. Maybe this is expecting things to come too quickly.

But I feel like so many of the new breakthroughs are going to come in areas where we are not going to have access to the data. Like you, I feel like I've learned a lot more every single month just thinking about how transactions work or just different ways to look for players and proving you're getting worse or whatever. And so there's still new neurons connecting when I read about baseball and analyze baseball. But you think of this as you have written an entire book that you can pre-order it, everybody out there. You can pre-order it, everybody out there. You can pre-order The MVP Machine, written by Ben Ledberg and Travis Hotchek.

Excellent book, presumably. But you've been in there, and you have seen that we've entered, they, we, I don't know how to refer to the industry, I guess, they, we, have entered the era of player development and emphasizing how to make the players you already have better and not just in terms of like here's the pitch mix you should be using or you

should throw your fastball higher let's it's going to be so much more about biomechanics or or like pitch creation and when you get into especially biomechanics, you're going to have so much like biotech gadgets that players are hooked up to. And the databases that show you like here's this guy's mechanics except in spreadsheet form, those are never going to be public. There's no reason for those to ever be public. We don't know. We're not going to get access to like what the edutronic cameras are saying about where the ball comes out of the dude's hand. not going to get access to like what the edutronic cameras are saying about where the ball comes out of the dude's hand so so much it's it feels like so many of the the coming breakthroughs even if they're just kind of subtle advancements in in player development are going to be in areas where

from the public side it'll be like guesswork and then retroactive analysis saying well here's how this guy improved in hindsight or or like, Team X traded for for player Y. And it seems like this is a lopsided trade, but Team X must see something in player Y, and they're gonna start using their cameras, and they're gonna make them better. It's like the way that we've talked about the Dodgers for like five years, you know? And so thinking about that, that's, that's daunting. It's daunting from the inside, it will be daunting from the inside. But from the outside, also, it just feels like it's going to be harder to write in a compelling way about what the coming breakthroughs are likely to be. Unless you write a book and get a lot of access, but it's hard to do that like five times a week. desired skill set for analysts who are being hired by teams from the internet has changed

somewhat. And we've talked about this in the past, but you look at all the hires from Fangraphs in recent months and years, whether it's Dave Cameron, Carson Sestouli, August Fagerstrom, Corinne Landry, and now Jeff Sullivan, at least at the time of those hires, those people, and you are not database experts in the way that the first people to go from the internet to teams were your keith woolners and dan foxes and mike fasts and the like who were really experts at manipulating data the strengths of the people i just named are not really querying and using sql and r although i think some of those people have subsequently picked up some of those skills. But at the time, it was more about just looking at baseball in a certain way, using whatever tools were at their or your disposal to come to these conclusions, picking up

trends. You don't always necessarily need the computer science degree. You need someone in the front office who has it, but then you also need people who can analyze baseball in the way that you do and then communicate your findings. And that seems to be increasingly important and valued by baseball teams. There are parts of baseball analysis that require just absurdly advanced mathematical skill. And that is undoubtedly true. And then the bulk of baseball analysis can really be quite simple i mean there's there's a reason why when you were reading an article online that's like fairly good you were just spending a lot of time looking at like linear regressions and like well here's what it looks like a decent relationship and here's what's not a decent relationship you're just so much of analysis just like looking for correlations between column a and column b and and neither there is one or there isn't. But also, I mean, it was years ago that people would write about how the pirates said,

I'm forgetting the names, and you have a far better memory than I do, so you can come up with them. But, you know, the pirates had their stat people, and then they had their middlemen, their communicators that they had on staff. Sometimes they would travel with the team. You have a name on the tip of your tongue. Please say it so that I don't feel stupid. Mike Fitzgerald, who is now with the Diamondbacks.

Yeah. Excellent. So I think you were right. Like wave one, if you will, of the internet hires of people with incredible deep level skill and wave two, I guess I would be a part of wave two, maybe wave three. And I'll refer to this wave as the filler wave, will be, you know, hopefully, if I could try to speak in the most positive way about this sort of opportunity, I think it's you're seeing an emphasis on a demonstrated ability to understand a fairly advanced level of analysis, and then have the ability to communicate that to other people.

It's sort of a form of, I guess, science writing, like the people who interpret journal articles and then put it up for people to read on, I don't know, Discover or Wired or wherever you want to read. So I don't know how widespread that is. I don't know if that's exactly what teams have had in mind, but you have people who are great analysts, you have people who are great communicators, and you have people who can be adept to a slightly lesser degree in both. It's like in old video game hockey games, right? You'd have the big guy who's slow but tough, you'd have the little guy who's really fast but weak, and then you'd have someone sort of in the middle who's maybe a little little tough and a little fast and you never really know if he has no strengths or no weaknesses depending on on what you choose and and so i guess in in that respect i should be the the guy in the middle with no strengths hopefully no weaknesses yeah well you mentioned the humor that used to be a

staple of baseball blocking and sometimes still is and I feel like that is something that you and Grant Brisby also kind of brought to baseball blogging in a different way. And I was going back and reading the oldest Jeff Sullivan blog post that exists on the internet from way back in December of 2003 at your original blog, Leone for Third. And it's clearly not quite as competent a writer as you are now, but it still sounds like you, you sort of had the Jeff Sullivan voice from the start. And I was talking to Meg Rowley the other day, and Fangraphs is hiring several contributors,

which is partly in response to your departure, but also was in the works even before we knew that you were leaving. And she's been sifting through hundreds of applications. And she said, you know, not a lot of Jeff Sullivans in the pile, lots of great people, but not the people who can bring your singular skill and approach to things. And I said, but I bet there are a lot of Jeff Sullivan impersonators. And she said, so many Jeff Sullivan impersonators. And she said so many Jeff Sullivan impersonators. And that is something that I think you have kind of rubbed off on people because you can tell a Jeff Sullivan post, not just from a scatterplot that you might use or something, but because you do have this very direct and kind of unadorned, but endearing and funny voice and very clear and kind of direct sentences and not a whole lot of excess flowery words laced in there.

And you can just kind of always tell a Jeff Sullivan post. And I think when a lot of people take up writing about any subject, obviously they're influenced by the people they read. And that's how it should be because you start out sort of sounding like someone you like. And then over time you start sounding like yourself ideally, and that's natural, but you kind of sounded to a certain extent like yourself at the start, at least I think in retrospect. So I don't know, where did that come from? Because you were not a writing person, you were a chemistry person. So how did you kind of develop your voice or have that voice that has been kind of copied everywhere since? I guess you found the original Jeff Sullivan blog post, but not the original Jeff Sullivan Internet material,

because I spent several years in high school posting on the ESPN message boards about the Seattle Mariners. And sometimes I wouldn't get along with the regulars on the message boards. So I would go hang out with my friends on the A's message board or the Rangers message board, the rival message boards, and everybody would be furious. But that's actually where I met Adam Morris, who then created the Lone Star Ball blog on SB Nation. And so that's a relationship that goes a long ways back. But that's, I mean, for the years, just a high school teenager posting on message boards and the turn of the millennium, you know, you're not proud of whatever your material was. of the era when it was just that, you know, 18 years ago, just that like intelligent kind of snark. You just snark everywhere. All blogging was and writing was, was snark at that point

of the internet. And to an extent, I guess so much of it still is, but just very much, I know more than you. And here's a joke about a a baseball player that's like kind of mean, but whatever. That makes it seem smart, but really you're just being an asshole. So that was definitely the first several years of my own internet personality. And it was, I'm sure I know that it was there too. I was probably an asshole to Raleigh Bonneys way too often on the blog because I just wanted them to play Adam Jones, which granted took the mariners

a little too long to figure out but i don't know i guess when you when you write and make yourself right every single day you sort of out of necessity develop your own voice pretty quick and it's funny because moving i think i was thinking about this earlier today because it starting – I've started to feel a little more sentimental and nostalgic, whatever the word is. And I remember having written at Fangraphs for a little while. I was warned, go to Fangraphs, don't read the comments. The commenters are mean. Commenters on the internet, they're all mean. Don't listen to them.

Don't take their feedback to heart. You need to have thick skin. and don't take their feedback to heart. You need to have thick skin. And I remember getting enough critical comments that would say like, you know, with every single one of your articles, the first two paragraphs are nothing. They're just like, you say nothing,

you make some jokes, and then eventually you get to the point. And I saw enough of those and then I would read some of the articles I've written and I would realize, oh, hey, this didn't do anything. This is just like 250 words that led nowhere, just like a dumb waste of time circle. So that actually really helped because now I feel like I can't get to the point fast

enough. So thank you, cruel, anonymous fan graphs, commenters who actually, whether or not you thought it was true, seem to have my long-term best interest at heart. Yeah. I have read the comments when I've had the opportunity to read comments at sites that I've written for, because I started at Baseball Perspectives, which is a subscription site. So the comments there are of a very high caliber, because for the most part, people aren't paying

for a subscription just to flame everyone with totally unsubstantial comments. So they would often point out mistakes or oversights or things I hadn't thought of or suggestions. And so I got in the habit of reading comments. And then I continued to read comments as much as I could. Now, the site I write for does not have comments. And maybe that's a good thing. I don't know. But I like comments and value comments when they are constructive, which sometimes they are. You just have to wade through many that are not to get to those, and you will probably feel worse about yourself at the end of that process. Yeah. No, that much is unquestionably true. Well, yeah. I mean, you've been at Fangraphs. I had forgotten how long you have been at Fangraphs

because you had been at SB Nation, at Lookout Landing, at Baseball Nation for many years before going to Fangraphs. But you've been at Fangraphs since, I think, a month after this podcast started, like August of 2012. That is a long time to be at one site on the internet, and almost 3,000 posts you have hacked up over that period. That's a lot of repetition and practice and desperation. And so, of course, you're going to get better at anything you do that many times if you're getting that kind of feedback from people constantly. Well, unless your Jeff Mathis hitting. Right.

Well, you went out with obviously your farewell post, but just prior to your farewell post, you went out with one more Mike Trout post, which I think is very appropriate. I don't know whether you just were looking for something and that was something on your mind or whether you felt like you wanted to go out with a Mike Trout post because he has been such a rich source of material for you. Do you feel like Mike Trout is your muse? Is he the player or the subject that you have enjoyed writing about the most over the past 15 years? I've enjoyed James Paxton a lot. And back in the early era, when I wrote almost exclusively about the Mariners, I enjoyed Felix Hernandez a lot. But no, it's from start to finish, it's Mike Trout. And I don't know, that's, I had the chance to

be Williams Estadillo. You know. That's more of a newcomer. Yeah, you're throwing away that chance. I didn't wake up Thursday morning with any intentions. And actually, the first post I thought I was going to write on Thursday went nowhere when I realized I was doing bad math. And it was just a waste of everyone's time. So I threw away four hours of research and then realized I should do a Mike Trapp post. It feels like it's suitable to do a Mike Trout post. And he is unbelievably good.

And I think that what it's actually going to take for the rest of the world, for the rest of the baseball-watching world, to understand how great Mike Trout is, it's going to be when he starts to be not great anymore. And then people will reflect on what he already was. Because, I mean, I promise, no exaggeration, he has been as good as Manny Machado and Bryce Harper combined. And just think about that. Think about that. Two potential $300 million contracts, two of the best free agents in the history of free agency, and Mike Trout's as good as both of them together. Unbelievable. Yeah. You know, you and I and Grant and Sam at one point had idly discussed writing a Mike Trout book or compiling all of our Mike Trout content into a book, which is something I'd like to do if we're all still alive when Mike Trout analysis, and it would be fun to track when we first realized what Mike Trout was and his constant evolutions and, oh, he's

not that great at this. Oh, he realized he wasn't that great at that, and now he is great at that. But you are not holding up your end of the bargain now because it's just going to be all of us producing Mike Trout content for this period of his career, and you have just gone silent. Well, okay, so I recognize I wasn't supposed to share this with the podcast, but the detail, my job description is that I am producing private Mike Trout content for the Tampa Bay Rays, and I will be doing it on a twice-daily basis, and I will be issuing reminders.

If you see the Tampa Bay Rays trade for Mike Trout what it will not be true is that it will have been my idea because I'm not that powerful but what will be true is that enough people will think that it was me on the outside in the same way that people think Dave Cameron just signed Manny Machado after having made the mistake of of signing Eric Hosmer it's funny the way that the internet reacts to those things. Do you know how many people work for baseball teams? Internet? I was thinking GMs or presidents of baseball operations get credit for like everything. Everything that a team does, at least at the major league level. They're just like great job or bad job by the GM.

But it's like dozens of people who are contributing to like almost every decision of any magnitude. Anyway, what I'm saying is the rays should have mike trout on them and i'm going to we'll see if like if if if the rays end up with mike trout and williams astidia within the near-term future i guess maybe i will have bent some ears yeah i'm envisioning your your first day in the office just coming in hot tip guys this mike trout if you guys looked into this guy at all play center field for the angels or good what if yeah what if hear me out what if he's not what if what if they're like look but actually look at these numbers he's not good it's entirely possible that your mind will be changed about some players you

thought were good and actually are not good or thought were bad and actually are good. And none of us will get to benefit from that knowledge, but at least you will. But yeah, there's nothing to prevent you from continuing to produce posts. You just can't publish them. You can just stick them in a drawer somewhere or in a file on your desktop and then send them to all of us when you are one day not working for a baseball team again. I'm sure you won't do that. The Mike Trout book, I guess, isn't the only venture you, Sam, Grant, and I have discussed. I think there was the idea of a broader baseball book, not just about Mike Trout. I don't know why one would write a book. It's not just about Mike

Trout, but I guess there's a lot of books that aren't. Yeah, we have talked about various joint projects over the years, and you're breaking up the band here. Yeah, so I mean, there's always the chance that I'll continue to write, and I'll just kind of tuck things away. Unpublished, not even things for work. I'll just, you know, if you, Sam, Grant, decide that you want to have a Mike Trout book, maybe I'll just kind of contribute in the dark for a little while and then, you know, submit them down the line. But I get the sense that there's going to be a lot of Mike Trout content yet to be written. And what I think is most incredible about that is we don't know a damn thing about Mike Trout at all. Like Mike Trout, the person remains very much a mystery to me. Although, you know, on the other hand, maybe he's really quite simple to understand, just a happy dude who likes the weather.

Yeah. Well, how have you found podcasting to be over the past couple of years? Because this has not been new to you. You used to do a podcast about the Mariners, of course, and you used to do regular guest spots on Carson's podcast. on Carson's podcast, but you've not podcasted at this magnitude, at this pace with a weird person who makes you do podcasts the week of Christmas and New Year's. So I know that you've considered it part of your job, and so you have felt obligated to do it. And I think that you have also derived some form of pleasure from it at times. And it's something that forces you to do something different than you do in your typical work because you lead this sort

of monastic life where you are just looking at leaderboards and producing posts and not necessarily speaking to people in the process, unless you're kind of reaching out to baseball people to get their sense of something that you're writing. But this podcast forces us or gives us the opportunity to constantly talk to people and sometimes very delightful people like Johnny O'Brien, who you never would have gotten to talk to or perhaps know about if not for this podcast. So I don't know. Has it been a positive experience for you? Do you find your relationship with the listeners to be different from your relationship with readers?

I think, first of all, maybe I've said this before, but my fiancé has noticed that since I started podcasting, I'm a lot better at talking at the end of the day because I get this practice, which is great because it used to be if I sat here long enough without talking, then I would just kind of forget how to do it. So this has been a net benefit. So the part-time baseball writer, Matthew Corey, a really good friend of mine, lives in Portland, not too far away. And one of the things that I find to be true about Matthew Corey that is not true of a lot of people, but one thing that's absolutely true about him is that no matter what mood I'm in, when I am going to see him or meet him or have a chat, I'm always in a much happier mood when it's over. Not because it's over, not because I'm delighted to be away from Matthew Corey. It's just he has whatever is the key to just like turning on a light inside of

me or something. I don't know, that sounds really intimate, but it's true. And I think from the beginning, you and I have been doing this for, I guess, officially 25 months because I kind of missed the first January. My first episode, I was in the airport leaving on a trip. But from the beginning, because my job was a writer first, even when the podcast was officially considered part of my job and I was compensated for it, I still always kind of thought like, you know what, the podcast just, sometimes it's just kind of annoying, especially the team previews. It's hard to, like the scheduling is kind of irritating. And I was- Thanks for leaving right in the middle of team previews, by the way. You're welcome, Ben. And I would think of it as sort of this obstacle to

whatever it is that I wanted to write about. It's like, well, I don't have time to podcast right now. But without fail, every single time, from the beginning, every single time, no matter what mood I was in, as soon as you press that record button, everything would be great. And then at the end, I would always feel grateful for the experience of it. And I think that's a credit to you. I've never, I've never felt just stressed or annoyed at the start of a podcast and then felt the same way at, at the end of it. And there are a lot of bad podcasts out there and there are a lot of bad podcast hosts out there. And I think it's, it's an absolute testament to you and your skill that I, I feel like you have,

you've carried this thing for as long as I've been on it. You have done the bulk of the work. You've done the bulk of the preparation. You've done the bulk of whatever it is that makes this podcast respectable. And so it has been a pleasure beyond anything I could have expected to, to come on and do this with you. It has meant a lot more to me than, than I, I thought what do you when you first presented it as an opportunity and sam was leaving i jumped at it because i thought cool thing i like ben and then you're like okay let's do it and i thought oh no i can never i can never take over for sam and this is a lot of work yeah but you have you've made it comfortable and and easy from the start and all

it took was you doing 98 of two people's jobs. And so I am forever indebted. I don't know how you do it, but you are an incredible worker. Well, I can remember some specific episodes that can't possibly have improved your mood by the end of it just because of technical difficulties and guests flaking at the last minute and an hour-long podcast taking three hours when you had multiple posts to produce. Those are, maybe you've just blacked out those particular episodes from your memory. Probably. Yeah, but obviously I feel entirely the same way about doing this with you. Not that I had any concerns at all about you taking over for Sam and carrying the flame. at all about you taking over for Sam and carrying the flame.

But I am very glad that we did this because I had doubts about whether maybe this is just a Ben and Sam, Sam and Ben thing, and it shouldn't be a Ben and someone else thing. And maybe we should just end it there and a thousand episodes. It's a nice round number and that could be that. But I'm very glad that we didn't do that because we've done almost 340 episodes since then and many of them have been a lot of fun and have led to a lot of really cool conversations and discoveries and it seems like people are still enjoying the thing so i feel like we have all brought some amount of joy to each other by continuing to keep this thing in existence. And I hope that that will continue to be the case. I mean, look, we've done, I don't have a count. We've done a

lot of episodes. We've talked to a lot of people and maybe we've had better podcasts. I don't know. I don't have a running list, but just the live podcast that we did with Fernando Perez in New York is, it's always going to stand out as just like this vivid career highlight. I never would have thought of doing a live. I never would have thought that podcasts would have their freaking moment that podcasts are having right now in society, that like podcasts are the place to be in a sense, at least for professional reasons. I'm bailing on a good podcast at the wrong time because podcasts are only getting more popular and lucrative. But I mean, just the idea, if I had only been able to join you and Fernando on that one podcast

alone, that would have made it more than worth it. And to be able to do this for 25 months, it's been deeply gratifying. Well, I'm glad we got to collaborate on something because for a while, we were just kind of competitors who liked and respected each other but also had reason to rue each other's existence regularly because we would constantly be writing about something that the other person wanted to write about and for a while my editor at Grantland referred to you as my nemesis because I was constantly worrying that you were going to take a topic I was working on. And usually you were, it wasn't really an unreasonable concern. It was like, as soon as I thought of something, I figured that you either had already thought of it or were about to think of it. And so

it was like the clock was ticking before the Jeff Sullivan post showed up. So I'm glad that we got to work together on something instead of trying to race each other to things. And you won't be able to write publicly, but you'll still be doing baseball stuff and thinking of things. So could you possibly slip me some post ideas from time to time? I will accept topics. I will definitely not be sharing anything that would give away anything that the Rays believe or are working on, but in terms of just like idle ideas that come to mind, yeah, absolutely, if something deserves to be written about.

Give me those idle ideas. Idle ideas. Well, I guess, in theory, I should be saying I will slip those ideas to Fangraphs first, but, you know, you can all, I don't know, place bids for the good ideas. I don't know. For all I know the good ideas. I don't know.

For all I know, I will be just as desperate for things to do internally that I'll need to keep all of the ideas to myself. But I don't know. This will be the last of our podcasting. This will not be the last of our idea exchanges. Yeah. Can you just call me from time to time and just say, Williams asked the DO. Just for old time's sake, that'd be nice. I'm touching my nose.

Okay. Yeah, I am sorry that I'm sure that this podcast will continue to be a hub of Williams asked Dio appreciation, but I'm sorry that that will not be with you because I've enjoyed having a mutual obsession

with him over the past year or so. That has been a highlight of this podcast and a highlight of just life in general, his existence and his increasing prominence. Does it make you feel better that he is so prominent that there is just a broader Williams Estadio? I don't like that I'm saying this, but I'm just going to say it. Stan community? Yeah, the Williams Estadio bandwagon. Yeah. I am glad that everyone has gotten on board because he deserves it. And he is no longer a cult figure because he has played himself out of cult status. I think he deserves more than that. God, I can tell that we're near the end. Yeah. I feel like I want to keep talking

because as long as I'm still pressing record, you can't technically leave. I guess you could, but you'll feel obligated to stay. I don't know. I guess I don't know whether to expect so many G chats in the middle of the night, but I don't know. I also don't want this currently being recorded for public consumption podcast to devolve into a number of inside jokes and references to things nobody understands. Yeah, well, I was just reading your three sentence post from December 11th, 2003, when you announced your presence to the baseball Internet. And you basically just said, I'm here, inspired by USS Mariner and the double A play of Justin Leone. Inspired by USS Mariner And the double A play of Justin Leone

Hughes said Not that this announcement deserves immediate acclaim But I figure the more Leone supporters The merrier, we'll see how this goes That was your Introduction to the internet, we'll see how this goes So I guess we have seen How it went, it went pretty well

I guess it's still going, this is all a product Of your initial posting, wherever your Journey leads you. But I would say it went well, arguably better than Justin Leone's baseball career went in the long run. Justin Leone was a hell of a third baseman at AA San Antonio. And anybody who says otherwise can get the hell out of here. But as I think about it in hindsight, first of all, I was right about Justin Leone. Jeff Cirillo was bad. And I guess even though it was unintentional, I'd just been following Dave Cameron from the beginning. He wrote a baseball prospectus.

I read him there. He was a U.S. Samaritan. That's why I started my blog. He left U.S. Samaritan. I left to look at landing. He was at Fangraphs. I came to Fangraphs. He joined a team a year ago, and I'm joining a team now so I look forward to

my new team destroying his in the World Series because it would bring me great pleasure. Well it's funny no one seems to regret their decision to go from writing to team. You would think that someone would at some point just say no this wasn't really

for me. I liked writing and I missed writing and liked being a public figure and having that interaction and tried the team thing and went back. And I guess Keith Law did that maybe. I mean, a few people have gone inside and then come back outside. And I don't know whether it's entirely by choice or whether just that particular opportunity ended and another one didn't present itself. But for the most part, once you go inside, you stay inside, which I take to mean that it must be pretty rewarding in its own way. There aren't a whole lot of supermetric writers out there who tried it and decided they didn't like it. On the other hand, I don't know if you've noticed, there's not a whole lot of writing jobs that are available on the outside. But no, you're right. And having had a good number of Fangraphs employees who I got to know, friends of mine who have gone to work for teams,

it was valuable that I could talk to them about their own experiences to help inform my own and to their credit. And I have a great appreciation that they were willing to give me the time to help talk me through what it would be like. And you're right, I only have a limited view into the people who have gone from writing into working for a team, but to an individual, everybody that I spoke with has loved it. They find it deeply rewarding. And so I hope that that will continue to be true for my own opportunity. But this is not an ill-considered decision, I guess. It took a lot of soul-searching, a lot of consideration. A lot of considering.

There's a lot of consideration, and I know that I kind of, I pointed in a few different directions, and I feel bad for getting your hopes up at certain points of it. But alas, I don't know. I don't know if you always knew it was going to end up here. I don't know what your own gut was telling you. Yeah, I wasn't sure. I mean, I didn't even know what to root for because I didn't want to root against you getting a job if you decided you wanted one and that that would make you happier in life. Selfishly, I hoped that you would ultimately decide that that wasn't what you wanted to do for whatever reason just from a utilitarian perspective of the number of people who get to consume content from jeff sullivan that number is a lot lower now and hopefully there will be other great things that

they will listen to and read instead but gonna miss talking to you obviously and people are gonna miss listening to you and i'm gonna miss you. And even though it's kind of nice that I don't have to compete for topics with you anymore, often talking to you or reading you would give me ideas and make me think about things. that you used, like if you would pioneer something like your pitch comps, for instance, which you got many posts out of, I guess, Joe Sheehan, who works for the Blue Jays now, who used to blog for baseball analysts, was the first to do something like that. But you brought it back to my attention. And I would occasionally say, yeah, Jeff Sullivan has this pitch comps system, and I'm going to incorporate that into this post. And just because, A, you are very adept and perceptive, and you're good at recognizing when things have changed, when a player is doing something differently, when a player comes along, your patented reliever who has pitched 10 innings and struck out 25 guys and you notice him before anyone else notices him. Like, to a certain extent, those posts just aren't going to be written by someone else because, A, you were good at noticing those things, and B, you were posting at such a furious pace that you just had to notice those things because you were desperate to notice something.

And so often when I was writing something else, there was always just a Jeff Sullivan post that I could link to and reference, which was nice because you just had such a huge body of work. And so now it's nice not to have to battle you for ideas. But on the other hand, I won't even know what good ideas went unwritten about because you weren't there writing them. I can say that one thing I definitely didn't expect was the resource of listener emails coming in related to this podcast. So many ideas coming out of listener emails.

And of course, also the live chats at Fangraphs, which you don't get to do. But so many ideas just presented from strangers or just readers or listeners that every so often you would see one, you'd think like, this is a million-dollar idea, or I guess I should say like a thousand-word idea that turns into not a million dollars it turns into very few dollars at all but yeah just having that wealth of of inspiration what i'm i one of the things that i've sort of dreaded is i look working for a team going to be surrounded by a number of people who know a lot about baseball and just want to talk about baseball

going to get access to a lot of different people who know so much about the game that I haven't learned yet. But I'm also not going to have chats and not going to have listener emails coming in. And hopefully the spark of inspiration is still in there somewhere, because otherwise, I don't know, the well could dry up pretty quick. And that's a fear of mine and probably, as of a second ago, a fear of the Tampa Bay Rays. Yeah, it turns out all along that the real market inefficiency was podcast at Fangraphs.com and the emails that come in and our Facebook group and all the smart people in there suggesting stuff. That is often a source of inspiration for us.

So, yeah, I know there are team people in there and posting job listings. So obviously they recognize that, but it is very helpful to have that reader interaction, both as an ego boost and a source of affirmation if you do a good enough job, but also, yes, as a source of inspiration. So I suppose we can't keep this thing going forever.

You have a new job to start. So I guess we can wrap this up. It really doesn't seem like that long ago that I was talking to you on the phone in an airport when you were on your way to Chile right when I was trying to replace Sam and you were leaving the country and all forms of contact for two weeks which was

wonderful timing but I guess it wasn't that long ago it was like two years ago but in a way it seems like less than that and in a way it seems like more than that because we have spent a lot of hours talking in those two years so it has been a

real pleasure I'm glad we got to do it I'm sorry that we don't get to do it longer. Who knows? Maybe we'll do it again one day in the future. But you have been the not just the perfect replacement for Sam, but just a perfect co-host in your own right, who I think carried on Sam's legacy, but put your own wonderful spin on it. And I hope that the show will continue to live up to that standard. And I'm confident that it will. But just as the show with you was slightly different from the show with Sam, I'm sure the show without you will be slightly different from the show with you. All I ever hoped was that if Sam ever listened to this podcast while I was on it, he wouldn't just hang his head in shame of embarrassment of being associated with a podcast and its beginning. It feels strange because it's been a little over two years, but while you and I have been

podcasting, you have gotten married, I have gotten engaged, and we're just a couple months short of me getting married. So we've had our own life achievements over the course of this. It's been a pleasure. There's a tier of people that you can refer to in your daily life. You might say of, I don't know, Grant, you might say, oh, he's my internet friend. And I have long considered you and Sam to be internet friends. And now having spoken with you on a thrice a week basis and additional Gchat, I feel

like I can call you an actual friend. And as my actual friend, I am now deserting you. So I apologize for that. But, you know, growing older, adulthood is all about losing friends by the wayside. Yeah. Well, I know that you are a hugger and I would gladly consent to a hug if we were within hugging distance right now, but there is a continent between us as there usually is. But just imagine that there is a figurative hug going on and you've taught us about trampolines and volcanoes and Scott Boris metaphors,

and all of that will be missed. And we will think of you whenever those subjects arise and many more. So thank you for your friendship and companionship and co-hosting. Sorry to lose you, but I hope that you have the best success you can and that you are very happy with your

decision and have a fulfilling next phase of your career. Ben, your voice has always felt like a hug. All right. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Ben. All right. That is a series wrap on Jeff Sullivan. And we really meant what we said to each other because even after we stopped recording, we

continued to express our mutual affection and appreciation and pleasure that we have gotten to do this podcast together. As I said, we will announce the succession plan soon. Obviously, change is always somewhat scary, and I've been living with the knowledge that this could be coming for some time, whereas this is coming as a shock to all of you, and it may take some time to get used to the idea, but I have complete confidence that this will continue to be a podcast you enjoy if you have enjoyed it up to this point. I really wouldn't want to continue doing it if I felt like it wouldn't be as good or I wouldn't enjoy it as much. And just as we all missed Sam when he left, but we're happy to have Jeff, I think we will all miss Jeff, but be happy to have his successor. And I have no concerns on that score, so stay tuned,

and we will all get through this together. The next co-host, by the way, is not Johnny O'Brien, although the thought did cross my mind. You can continue to support this podcast on Patreon, and obviously I hope you will. It wouldn't have lasted nearly this long without your Patreon support, and it couldn't continue without it. The following five listeners have already pledged their support by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount tyler hodges eric peters jeff snyder will cook and sarah luthi thanks to all of you you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild where i'm sure we will all be discussing our favorite jeff sullivan moments and wishing him well you can send comments and questions via email at podcast at fangraphs.com

or via the Patreon messaging system. If you're a supporter, you can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Thank you to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, which will, of course, continue.

As Jeff mentioned, you can pre-order my book, The MVP Machine, coming this spring. And we will resume the team preview series next week. Actually, one of the teams we'll be talking about next time, the Tampa Bay Rays. They were originally scheduled for this

week, but we felt given the circumstances, it might make sense to postpone it so as not to put Jeff in the uncomfortable position of previewing his future employer. So thank you all very much for supporting this podcast for so long, for continuing to make it something that we find extremely rewarding, for creating such a great and supportive community and i look forward to more years to come we'll have a wonderful weekend and we'll talk to you next week Thank you.